GAME CLEAR No. 103 -- Pac-Mania

Pac-Mania (1987, Arcade)

Compilation: Pac-Man Collection (2001, GBA)
Compilation Developer: Mass Media
Compilation Publisher: Namco
Clear Version: Game Boy Advance
Clear Platform: Analogue Pocket
Clear Date: 7/22/22

I’m gonna be honest, I fired this up on GBA and set the final level as low as possible in the game settings just so I could technically “beat” it and write about it on here. I could just start another blog series to talk about games that don’t have win conditions or endings, but this works for now.

Pac-Mania is a wonderful update to the original game. It’s got great pseudo-3D graphics with a 3/4 perspective, good tunes, new power-ups, new ghosts, and a jump button, but it’s fundamentally still just eating dots in a maze.

The most compelling bit to me is the pink power-up that appears after a certain number of dots are eaten. It dramatically increases the number of points Pac-Man gets for eating ghosts, and it lasts until he dies (even persisting through stage clears). It rules! It creates pressure to make sure to get it with each life and stay alive as long as possible after doing so. This is pretty easy early on when Pac-Man can jump and none of the ghosts can, but some jumpers join the game later making that a bit trickier.

It’s strange. In a lot of games, simply achieving a high score isn’t much of a motivator for me (although that has changed a bit over the years as I’ve played more and more arcade stuff), but coming up with strategies to hyper-optimize each life and get as many 7650-point ghost gobbles as possible is really compelling to me. A game that initially struck me as a mere graphical upgrade has moved its way up to become one of my favorites in the series. Play Pac-Mania.