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.
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.