Pac-Land

released on Aug 01, 1984

Pac-Land itself is split into trips. In each of these trips the objective is to get the fairy (that is kept under Pac-man's hat) to Fairyland and also to return home to Pac-Man's house. The majority of the trip involves moving from left to right avoiding various obstacles such as the enemy ghosts, water spurts and quicksand traps. Each trip is divided into a number of rounds, the end of which provides Pac-Man with bonus points depending on how much time he has left and also his position in jumping at the end of each round. If the player runs out of time before finishing the round, Sue, the purple ghost, will speed up rapidly. The penultimate round of a trip ends with Pac-Man entering Fairyland and returning the fairy under his hat to the Fairy Queen. In return the Fairy Queen gives Pac-Man magic boots. For the final round of the trip, Pac-Man has to travel from right to left back home. For assistance he uses the magic boots, which allow him to jump repeatedly while in mid-air. Once Pac-Man completes the trip, he is greeted by Ms. Pac-Man and Baby Pac-Man. In the US release of the game, Pac-Man's cat and dog in the cartoon series, Sour Puss and Chomp-Chomp, are also there to welcome Pac-Man home. Pac-Man then begins his next trip following the same objectives as before, although the difficulty increases. As in the original Pac-Man, there are fruit which appear to eat for bonus points and power pellets to turn the ghosts blue and vulnerable. A hidden item (sometimes accidentally dropped by the ghosts) is a Flagship from Galaxian, which rewards 7650 points when collected (a reference to Namco's goroawase number of 765). The Galaxian Flagship is a long running cameo that appears in the Namco-made Pac-Man games. There are also hidden bonuses in the game, eating ghosts in a certain order will give extra time and pushing an obstacle in the opposite direction can give extra lives, invincibility, and balloons to collect for points and warps.


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This feels like it was made as a joke (complimentary).

Damn, they made a whole game based on that MS Paint stage in Smash Bros!

Pac-Land holds up remarkably for being basically the first true 2D platformer, all things considered. It genuinely feels like someone tried to come up with the idea of "What if Pac-Man just needed to get to a place?", and tried to integrate it around the base concept of Pac Man being a guy who gets chased by and eats ghosts, with the four being as much a threat to you as the environmental hazards. its status as an high-score chasing arcade title focused on running to build up points, it feels kind of like a proto-endless runner if you think about it. Also makes Pac-Man getting a cameo in Sonic Dash really funny in hindsight.

There's definitely some "pre-Mario" conventions the game struggles from, but I didn't find double tapping the move button to dash to be one of them; I've played enough Smash Bros and Kirby to not really flinch at the double input dash like some may. That being said, I hope that whoever thought needing to spam the D-pad to increase time gained from springboards falls into a river IRL. Beyond that, the game looks kinda putrid, but the soundtrack's got some memorable melodies that are held back by less than stellar instrumentation; the real Sonic 4 problem of a 2D platformer. Beyond all that, there's not much to say about Pac-Land. More so than a game of any defining quality, it's more an interesting little period piece of what one of gaming's most beloved genres was before Super Mario Bros redifined and became the baseline for it a mere year later.

Eh, i think that is the best way to describe this game. The controls are very janky, the level design while not bad is certainly far from great, and just ends up being a generic platformer. You can maybe find some fun in this but I wouldn't recommend trying

This right here? This is the good shit.

You’re in Pac Land now bitch, we mash our buttons to run up in here. Take your dpad b button holding candy ass back to Super Mario Bros

Definitely the best 2d arcade platformer starring Pac-man oat