I'm not the biggest Pac-Man fan, so I kinda hoped this collection would make me a bit more acquainted with the franchise.

It's a fine celebration compilation, although a bit underwhelming, too. The selection of games is pretty good, with my favorites especially being Arrangement and Championship Edition, but it's somewhat of a shame that they didn't lean more into the archived history of the franchise, especially with Digital Eclipse blowing expectations out of the water nowadays for these kinds of things. And I wish the arcade customization and gachapon systems were more in-depth, because aside from the individual missions and focus on earning coins from playing arcade titles, your coins don't necessarily go too far.

Unless you're a diehard fan of the historical character, you're probably better off finding one of those beefier Namco collections instead, because I only really found about half of these games to be entertaining.

I normally only write reviews for games that I have a satisfying understanding of. This one will be an exception, I spent a solid evening trying out the various games in this collection and am going to drop some impressions. Let it be stated that I gave some of these games barely any chance. I have nothing that could be mistaken for mastery in any of them, and no interest in pursing it.

Anyway, I enjoyed checking out this collection. It didn't sell me on Pac-Man as a franchise, but it was quite interesting to try each game. I love game compilations, they're a treat to explore as a game designer. Trying new games is my favorite part of gaming, so compilations like this appeal to me quite strongly.

The first thing to talk about here is the framing that Pac-Man Musuem+ presents. You have a little arcade that you can customize, each game exists on a machine that both costs coins to play & rewards coins from play, and you can spend coins on a gacha for new decorations. I'm pretty narrowly split between "I sure don't care" & "this is actually a pretty neat idea and I can respect it". If this was a game I had any intention of ever revisiting I could start to see the value add, meanwhile it's hard not to get annoyed at the unlock popups after exiting a game.

I love the idea of creating a system that gives meaning to inserting new credits into games, although this implementation doesn't have enough punch to meaningfully succeed at recreating the context of spending coins in an arcade. I don't think that experience is something the developers needed to have tried for here, but I've definitely gained an interest in playing a game that does successfully emulate that context.

The first open of the game is a little rough. You're bombarded with pac-man-machine sounds and have like a dozen popups to go through. The arcade tutorials are reasonable, the "you've unlocked some holiday wallpaper" ones shouldn't be allowed to appear literally right after you've read through the tutorial.


I was excited that each game had a history blurb. Unfortunately they didn't put anything interesting in there. They're all pretty much rehashes of the game description. This was an awesome opportunity on the museum side of the experience, so that feels like a bit of a shame. Video game history is so interesting, I'm sure there's plenty of cool stuff to learn about all these games.

Now I'll go through my impressions of each game included in the collection


PAC-MAN

I've never really found PAC-MAN fun, I'm pretty apathetic to it. It's probably some before my time "you had to be there" thing. I dislike how the game incentivizes camping power pellets so that you can bait some ghosts and gobble them up. Yeah the ghost AI is cool, but it's not enough to make the game feel dynamic to me.

SUPER PAC-MAN

I don't like the zoom-zoom-invincibility-power-pellets. The gates & keys are interesting. It's especially funny how they set up situations to trap yourself. There's probably some potential here, I can imagine a pac-man where the state of the maze is a huge component of what the player has to keep track of. This is not that hypothetical pac-man, and super pac-man is only hypothetically fun

PAC & PAL

This one was a pleasant surprise! I quite like the card mechanic that directs you to a random objective on the maze. This is a step closer to some of the dynamism that I feel is missing in PAC-MAN. Then they play to PAC-MAN's strengths by introducing another AI agent for you to keep track off. Unfortunately PAC & PAL lacks the depth that would make me want to keep playing it, but this is a solid start to reaching pac-gameplay that's more my style. I'd happily take a galaxian blaster over a power pellet any day.

PAC-LAND

Got filtered by that lake jump. I actually have no idea how to get past it. I do like the troll level design (like the log bridge), but that feels like going a step too far.
Not a fan of repeatedly slamming the stick right to buildup speed, but that would probably feel better on a arcade machine joystick. Otherwise it's neat idea.

PAC-MANIA

"Let's give Pac-Man a jump" - a statement dreamed up by the utterly deranged. Maybe Pac Mania ends up using this jump well, but from what I played this drains the little game essence pac-man had. This is basically the equivalent of the parry plague that many modern action games suffer from. Who cares about positioning when you just have to time your answer to enemies correctly?

PAC-ATTACK

Awesome to see a puzzle arcade game here. This is a pretty interesting take on the genre, especially since it doesn't have a concept of color groups. I am intrigued by the nuances of ghost placement and consumption, if i were to return to any game in the collection it would be this one.

PAC-IN-TIME

I got softlocked in the first level. Didn't give it any more chance, and thus don't really have any thoughts on it. I like how this collection added English translation subtitles. One of the items made me question why I was playing this when i could have been continuing my Saint playthrough in Rainworld.

PAC-MAN ARRANGEMENT Arcade version

This could have been the best one, but the ghosts are a menance to society. They move so fast that it doesn't really feel fun to avoid them or fair when you get caught. That's a huge shame, because the presentation, vibes, and variety are excellent. They do a great job of both staying true to pac-man and remixing it cool ways. In theory the BS ghosts are counterbalanced by the helpful stage gimmicks, but in practice my deaths didn't feel enough like skill issue.

PAC-MAN ARRANGMENT Console Version

This is like PAC-MAN Arrange, but they violently ripped out its soul. The ghosts aren't frustrating anymore, but the presentation isn't nearly as charming. This one just isn't very interesting, despite changing the one thing that ruined the former game

PAC-MAN CHAMPIONSHIP EDITION

The fruit and pellet reveal system is nifty, but the game felt pretty boring.

PAC Motos

...

PAC 'N ROLL REMIX

Kinda fun, although it's too fast for my tastes. I'm fairly certain the ludicrous speed is the point, but it doesn't stick the landing for the experience to feel good.

PAC-MAN BATTLE ROYALE

I've actually played this before in an arcade. Too bad I don't remember how that experience went, must not have been very memorable. It's a decent setup for an arena experience. The escalating speed, bounces and ghosts that drift in & out of the forefront of your attention all work together well. That said, this game is smoked by its competition in the same genre. I don't know why I would want to play this if I'm in a scenario where I have nearby friends to fight.


PAC-MAN 256

Huh i didn't know the Crossy Road developer made a Pac Man game. I'm sure this game has caused a lot of money to change hands. It's pretty cool to experience the game without the monetization being the central parasite on your attention. It seems well designed for what it is, but i don't find what it is very interesting

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The cool part of playing a compilation is that many of these game I would have never otherwise tried, even if a game misses for me I can still enjoy the process of quickly checking it out

An amazing collection I had a blast with! The games play super well and I love the customizable arcade they have here too.

There's a few small things I wish the collection had (ex. Turn off border art, screen options, better crt filters, option to use Arcade Archives Pac-Land controls) but said things I wanted isn't enough for me to rank this collection lower. I was disappointed by recent game collections, but I'm really happy that this was a heavy hitter.

The missions were fun to do but I did hate how grindy Pac-Man 256 missions were. Its where I spent the bulk of my hours on

Overall, amazing collection glad I was abke to play Pac-Man Arrangement and Pac N Roll Remix again. I also really enjoyed Pac-In-Time. Didn't think I'd enjoy it but I ended up loving it.

Full video review: https://youtu.be/_r5xU9xSkLs

Nearly twenty years ago, I had this fun little Gameboy game called Pac-Man Collection. It was a bundle of four different Pac-Man games that allowed someone like myself - who didn’t get to really experience the arcade era - a chance to get into the Pac-Man series proper. Now here we are in 2022 with an exponentially better version of that game.

Overview & Customization
Basically, this is a collection of a bunch of different Pac-Man games with this cool “arcade” customization feature thrown on top of it. As you play more games, you unlock tokens which you can use to play other games as well as roll in a gashapon machine to unlock statues that you can then use to deck out your arcade.

Each game has a bunch of different “missions” to complete and these too unlock more cosmetic things to place, whether that be flags, figures, benches, tables, or even new wallpapers. Overall, the whole arcade customization thing is kinda basic, but it’s a fun enough distraction and definitely a better alternative than just a menu listing the different games you can play.

Games
That Gameboy game I mentioned earlier? It has just four Pac-Man games. This collection? It has fourteen, including everything from the original 1980 arcade game to lesser-known ones like the 2005 DS game Pac 'n Roll or the 1995 SNES game Pac-In-Time. Most of the games take up the traditional Pac-Man style gameplay, but those two examples, along with others, offer up a bit more variety - mostly in the way of platforming.

Not to say that they are all good though - I wasn’t really a fan of Pac-In-Time and Pac-Man Battle Royale is pretty much the worst thing ever if you don’t have others to play it with. It’s mostly balanced out though - a bit of good, a bit of bad, a lot of just okay. My personal favorite was probably Championship Edition.

Missing Games
That said, the collection is missing a few key Pac-Man games I would have liked to see. The major one of course being Ms. Pac-Man, although that is likely because the game was not developed by Namco directly. But then you’re missing stuff like Championship Edition 2, which is very surprising seeing as how the first one is included and Championship Edition 2 is perhaps the most definitive Pac-Man experience yet and would have likely been my favorite game in the pack if it were included.

There are others of course - the Pac-Man World series definitely deserves its own collection - but overall, it’s a solid collection and covers a lot of Pac-Man’s history. In fact, it is by far the most definitive collection of Pac-Man games yet and I would have no trouble calling it the best.

Overall
The collection plays well, runs just fine, looks great at 4k, and has just enough customization to make it more than just another collection of Pac-Man games. That and it even works right out of the box on the Steam Deck - where I had fun jumping from game to game.

So yes, PAC-MAN MUSEUM+ a pretty easy recommendation to make, not just for Pac-Man fans, but for fans of retro gaming in general. It’s got a fun batch of games to play through, some nice bonus features by way of leaderboards and arcade customization, and I am honestly struggling to find anything negative to say here - it’s just an all-around solid release and a great way to get into one of the medium’s most important series.

Pretty good selection here!

I enjoy that your home base is a purgatorial room with no entrance/exit in which Pac-Man must just play his old games.

Genuinely boggles my mind there is some discourse about the "IP" and they re-named Pac-boy or something... ummm ok.

There are some awesome games and some trash, but it's all interesting enough to warrant dipping into. Little thoughts on each game:

Pac-Man : Good OG port. Missions gave me motivation to improve my skills a bit which is cool.

Super Pac-Man : Pretty wild. I feel like I've never seen this one in an arcade. I like the eating the locked up fruits mechanic and becoming the titular big Pac-Man.

Pac & Pal : Not as interesting or fun as Pac or Super but entertaining enough to play around with a bit.

Pac-Land : Love this game and still find it crazy it doesn't seem to own its historical clout as almost certainly majorly influencing Super Mario Bros. It's really fun but also would have benefited from some type of Save-State system.

Pac-Mania : It's isometric Pac-Man with a jump button. It's real cool... can be a little frustrating that the point-of-view is a little small so you aren't sure what the nasty ghosts are up to.

Pac-Attack : Went into this one very skeptical... actually ended up having a real unique puzzle mechanic that uses Pac-Man well. There are blocks, ghosts, and a Pac-Man. It's a combo of Tetris and landing your Pac-Man on the ghosts which I thought worked well.

Pac-In-Time : Love the lazy porting here or the weird licensing issues that caused there to be English subtitles under Japanese characters for a game that has an English translation!

The platforming and puzzling are intriguing but I found Pac-Man's floaty and floppy movement disgusting.

Pac-Man Arrangement : Both of these (there are two separate ports) just kind of feel like pretty and easy Pac-Man.

Pac-Man Championship Edition : It's cool this finally gets a port off of 360. The port is not amazing... it looks to be 720p to my eyes, but the game is incredible. The music, vibe, and pacing of the Championship Edition games make for one of the most satisfying and addicting game experiences I've enjoyed. It looks beautiful and gets your adrenaline going in a way that for me, it feels as if I want to become one with Pac-Man.

Pac-Motos : A re-skin of some other game... you knock things off a platform... I was unimpressed.

Pac 'n Roll Remix : A port of the Wii port of the DS original. It does not feel good to control and you can 100% tell it's a touch screen designed game. Seems like it might have been cool on the DS... it ain't cool here!

Pac-Man Battle Royale : If you've got some buddies, this thing brings the goods. Excellent party game tucked in here on this collection. Playing the CPU sucks.

Pac-Man 256 : First time this game gets a console release. It's a fun little Pac-Man mobile game where you are sort of endlessly collecting power pellets and escaping/eating ghosts. You can see where the micro-transaction piece would have been built in. It's actually a cool little score-attack game.

What an intersting Pac-Man collection if I have to say so myself! I was lucky enough to win this game from Pac-Man himself (from the official Pac-Man Instagram). It's a solid collection with great games, but with noticeable flaws.

PROS
- First of all, the selection of games is pretty good overall! It has all the games of the original base Pac-Man Museum, which I really enjoyed.
- My personal favorites from the collection are Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man, Pac-Land, Pac-Man Arrangement '96 (Arcade), Pac-Man Championship Edition and Pac-Man 256.
- Though they're not my favorites, I did enjoy Pac-Man Arrangement '05 and Pac-Motos as well.
- Pac-Man Arrangement '96 finally has the correct audio pitch! Previous releases from the early 2000s Namco Museum game made the OST from the game very high pitched, and it felt awkward in comparsion to the regular pitch. I also adored what they did to restore the credits and created their own loop to the game's attract mode from Classic Collection.
- I also really enjoyed the customizable arcade aspect of the game! My arcade went through 4 major revisions throughout my playthrough, and I loved being able to see other Pac-Man characters wandering around the arcade, as well as being able to listen to music from the games while at the main screen.
- I really liked the idea of missions! There are some missions I don't like doing but they give me more of a sense of completion whenever I complete them.

Now there's sadly issues I have with the collection.
CONS:
- Emulation is rather sub-par: Alongside notable forced bilinear filters, incorrect display ratios/no pixel perfect modes, there's noticeable input delay and there's this awkward sound emulation error that occurs during all the classic arcade games. In addition to that, there's this heavy audio splice thing which shows up if you play for an extensive period of time. Going to the system menu and resuming the game fixes it, but it shames me that they didn't bother to fix it despite having several updates. The video options are also rather lackluster in comparison to previous compilations, and the CRT filter is pretty barebones, most especially in Pac-Land.
- The lack of game options for the classic arcade games in this collection really bothered me honestly, considering how previous collections always had these customizable options.
- Some of the games are based on their Japanese counterparts, most notably Pac-Mania and Pac-In-Time. While I understand some of the changes, I've been rather iffy with the choice to use Pac-In-Time's Japanese version internationally, considering how the US version is already there and with the Japanese version being considerably harder and more painful to play through.
- Like Arcade Archives Pac-Land, Ms. Pac-Man's near-complete erasure from all the games is what bothered me the most about this collection. It baffles me that they went to completely censor Ms. Pac out of all the games where she appears, and it's a huge shame that AtGames and Bandai Namco are unwilling to cooperate to bring her back from this legal jumbo.
- Some of the missions, most especially the excessive coin grinding required for Pac-Man 256.
- This collection generated my dislike for Pac-In-Time.
- This is just a personal thing but I really wish there was online play for any of the games, wish being able to play Pac-Man games with multiplayer was easier.
- I ALSO really wish there were more surprise picks for Pac-Man titles like Pac-Man Championship Edition DX and Pac-Man Adventures in Time (latter will probably NEVER happen), but hey maybe in the next collection

Overall a neat collection! Most of my problems mainly consist of the emulation and presentation of the bonus features, but it's a really solid collection of games! I'd recommend this one only if you're a true Pac-Maniac though, otherwise you might Pac-Away for the next compilation featuring him or settle in with the Arcade Archives games.
(Finished with all missions completed and all non-DLC Gashapon figures obtained)

Pretty good Pac-Man collection if you ask me, and the selection of games isn't bad either. There are many bangers one can really get a fun time out of, like Pac-Mania, Arrangement and my guilty pleasure, Pac-Man 256.
There are some other games to which this collection also helps to come out of obscurity a little bit such as Pac-Land or Pac & Pal, both very interesting takes on the original formula IMO, and Pac-Land, which I love for its uniqueness compared to the rest of games in the collection.
Oh and yeah, Pac In Time can suck it LOL

In technical terms of the games themselves, it's really lackluster overall. No video modes (beyond a CRT filter), DIP switches, button mapping or even save states for games that really need them (i.e OG Pac-Man). Most of the achievements are pretty fine too, although there are some instances which are either too challenging or require a lot of grinding, making it annoying at times. Also, the emulation sometimes can take a dive in FPS, so it's not too good either.

Now, I quite liked the game's presentation. I love the concept of the game giving you the chance to customize your own arcade with guest characters appearing over time, that's a nice detail.

I'm not getting everything for the moment because normally I play Pac-Man for the nobility's sake. I recommend it still, but it could have been so much better...

You know, I reviewed every other game in this collection so I might as well review this as well.

This is a very solid collection of PAC-MAN games. The games look great and generally play well, and most of the titles on offer here are enjoyable in their own right, though there are some misses here like Pac-in-Time and 256. The customizable arcade also adds a unique and charming layer of personality to the package's presentation, and was something I consistently found myself screwing around with in between game sessions. Certainly has a lot more character than just a basic game menu.

The game is a bit of a chore to 100% complete, though. Most games have at least one groan-worthy mission, such as getting to very late rounds in the arcade titles (expect to abuse the hell out of pause-saves here), the 20-to-30-hour long PAC-MAN 256 grind, and the just plain absurd ones like having to play all of Pac n' Roll Remix in one sitting. The reward of arcade cabinets no longer consuming coins honestly isn't worth it since the game gives you plenty of coins to begin with. I also wish there was some more historical content related to the games included here, such as concept art. It's not a huge issue, but it would have been nice all the same.

Regardless of some issues with the game, I think this is a very solid package overall, and I really enjoyed exploring a slice of the history of series I kind of wrote off for all this time. If you're looking for a nice sample platter of the PAC-MAN series, you can't get much better than this. And considering how cheap this game is, it's a very easy one to recommend to anyone interested in the series.

Probably one of the best collections out there, up there with Sonic Mega Collection and Kirby's Dream Collection. 14 games, some of which haven't gotten good rereleases in ages, or flat out have never been released outside of arcades getting full accessible releases is great.

Only major downsides are that Mrs. Pac-Man isn't here for relatively predictable reasons, that game is a rights nightmare, Pac-In-Time is a surprisingly unenjoyable game, and holy shit, who thought it was a good idea to have the main lobby's theme be a cacophonous mess of Pac-Man arcade noises and SFX haphazardly over-layed over one another. I know it's supposed to sound like an arcade of Pac-Man games running at once, but in the end it straight up sounds like a garbled mess and is terrible to listen to. Something more chill and low-tempo such as History from Sonic Mega Collection would've been more befitting to make me actually want to hang out in the lobby some and just simply sit around.

I feel like I don't actually like playing Pac-Man all that much. There's a fair bit of variation here though.

Notably it includes Pac-Man 256 and strips out all of the ads and mobileness from it which is nice.

Maybe there's some more games in there that I'll enjoy, but I'm not so sure.

Jogado no Xbox Game Pass. Eu definitivamente não sou o maior fã de Pac-Man, então não sei se teriam melhores opções de jogos pra uma coletânea dessas, mas colocar Pac-in-Time e o Arrangement de console foi um ultraje complicado. Mas Pac-Man Arrangement (arcade), Pac & Pal e Pac 'n Roll Remix foram gratas surpresas e mostram tudo que já tentaram fazer com essa bola amarela.

Como coletânea de aniversário, eu esperava vídeos e imagens dos bastidores, artes conceituais, algum tipo de modo história com missões pra andar pela linha do tempo da série... mas tem um minigamezinho de gacha e decorar salinha. Fazer o que.