Pac-Pix represents one of the most unique games in the Pac-Man series and a good showcase early in the Nintendo DS’s lifespan. It is these simple, pick up and play titles that made the DS at launch an eye catching handheld from the console style games that the Game Boy Advance & PlayStation Portable brought to the table. It’s a cute game that gradually adds new ways to draw, chomp, and guide Pac-Man through this book adventure.
I feel that people tend to forget that early DS had a handful of mobile style games sold at retail price. It’s what seemingly along repetition that made Pac-Pix get bashed by critics then and even nowadays. To me, in its hour and a half runtime, Pac-Pix sets out to showcase everything it needs to do with a creative artifact aesthetic, bubbly soundtrack, and a fun game that only was possible on the Nintendo DS. Woah that’s a big Pac-Man you drew there…

It seems like almost since its inception, the iconic game series Pac-Man has been trying to reinvent itself. After a couple of minor reskins of the original gameplay concept, designer Toru Iwatani threw out the entire handbook only two years later with the absolutely bonkers Super Pac-Man. Instead of simply chomping on dots, our pie-chart-shaped protagonist is tasked with collecting keys and opening doors as he navigates through a very unfamiliar maze. Since then, the series has oscillated between returning to original form and burning the house down, to varying degrees of success. Through earnest attempts to refresh the core gameplay (like the excellent Pac-Mania, by Iwatani himself) and blatant attempts to cash in on the brand (like Pac-In-Time, a reskin of the already existing Fury of the Furries), Pac-Man persisted as a recognizable character even as he became increasingly divorced from the simplistic dot-scarfing gameplay that made him a household name.

By the time Pac-Pix—a very early Nintendo DS title released in 2005’s first quarter—was dropped into the market, Pac-Man had already been locked in for decades as a permanent member of the gaming Pantheon alongside the likes of Mario and Sonic. Pac-Pix’s premise is a recognition of its place in a long history. Director Tetsuya Shinoda, who had no experience with developing Pac-Man titles before or since, cooked up something simple: the player draws the classic character on the bottom screen of the DS, bringing him to life by their own hand and guiding him through the stages with touch controls. On its face, it’s a brilliant conceit; everyone knows what Pac-Man looks like, and anyone can draw him.

The concept might seem like a match made in heaven for the Nintendo DS, but Shinoda had been nursing it much earlier. It was first conceived as an arcade title, and then as an application for Personal Digital Assistants—because yes, those were still around by the mid 2000s! When the massively successful DS arrived onto the scene, with its highly responsive touch controls that put the gaming experience on any PDA to shame, it gave Shinoda and producer Hideo Yoshizawa the perfect opportunity to pitch the game to Namco. Yippee!

So does Pac-Pix manage to do much with its great idea? Truthfully, not really. Once Pac-Man has been prestidigitized onto the playing field, your means of controlling him are frustratingly limited. You manipulate him solely through use of the bottom screen, drawing lines to guide his path (he can only move in a simple four directions, as you’d expect) and altering his momentum by tapping and dragging him. It’s a strikingly similar control scheme to Kirby: Canvas Curse, which, despite releasing a mere 14 days after Pac-Pix, manages to be a far more seamless experience. Something about Pac-Pix that genuinely is very delightful, however, is how forgiving it is of mistakes. You can draw him pretty oblong, misshapen, large or small and he’ll still come to life and start munching away.

Ultimately, it’s good to frame Pac-Pix in its proper context before being too harsh on it. It’s an idea that predates the hardware it was made for, shopped around as a tech demo, and developed on a fairly small budget. It doesn’t have the same benefit as early DS efforts by Nintendo; the developers didn’t seem to have an extremely keen understanding of the system’s capabilities. In spite of all this, it manages to be decently fun and cute. And credit where it’s due: it strikes a nice balance between novelty and a recognizably Pac-Man experience.