Pac-in-Time

The Good
Just after he brought back the four items and battled the ghosts in Pac-Man's previous adventure, the Pac-Family is happy once more. Suddenly, Pac's archenemy, the ghost witch, takes revenge on Pac for destroying her gum monster and separates Pac from his family, transporting him back to 1975 when he was still a Pac-Kid. There, every creature turns against him. Pac must venture through five lands to reach the castle of the gum monster, destroy the guardian of the time portal, and use it to return to his own time.

Gameplay consists of getting a number of pellets before he can continue onto the next area. What interested me about the gameplay is how you can collect the pellets, by using four items that he can obtain by going through a colored rings. The fireball allows him to kill most enemies. The bubble allows Pac to travel underwater. The sledgehammer helps Pac pound the ground to reveal hidden passages. Personally, I like the magic rope that has Pac pulling an Indiana Jones, clinging onto ceilings and swinging him up to higher platforms. Along the way, Pac meets his enemy, the ghosts, who can be eaten by collecting a power pellet.

Pac-in-Time has Pac traveling through mountains, forests, fortresses, villages, and finally the Ghost Witch's castle where he meets her gum monster for the second time. The graphics are rich and colorful, and the enemies and the ghosts are drawn nicely. Every couple or so levels, there are translucency effects, and an example of this, is within the first environment (the mountains), there is a mixture of rain, snow, and thunder. Some of these effects are repeated in other environments. The pellets are shiny, and therefore do not look lifeless anymore.

The sound is great. One sound that I like is the sound of Pac launching a fireball at his enemies. Whenever there is thunder, it is consistent with the lighting. The sounds when you use one of the four items are accurate to what you are doing. The music is a real pleasure to listen to, especially while venturing through the third and last environments (fortress, castle) where the third sounds like a remix of one of Elvis Presley's songs, and the fifth tune is much better than its previous ones.

The Bad
Nothing.

The Bottom Line
Pac-in-Time has an interesting story: Pac gets transported into the seventies where everyone has not heard of him and they make his life hell. He has to find the time portal that would send him back to his own time, but he needs to defeats its guardian (in this case, the dreaded gum monster). There are up to four items that you can use in the game to collect all the power pellets in the level. The sound and graphics are excellent, and regardless of walking around an actual environment, the gameplay is faithful to what you did in previous Pac games