I'm not good enough at base Pac-Man to say, but I suspect high-level play of Pac-Man sees the player achieve the same level of mastery required to clear a full loop of Pac-Mania: getting the game down to a point where the player follows a set pattern around the board, forcing the ghosts to adopt a consistent, easily-memorized pattern of their own. In that respect, I suppose Pac-Mania is deceptively challenging in spite of its gimmick (jumping) seeming like an easy way to cheese the game. Indeed, while Block Town and Pac-Man's Park are over and done with pretty quickly, I spent hours grinding out Sandbox Land and ESPECIALLY Jungly Steps. I think the game's solution to difficulty scaling - speeding up the ghosts, reducing the timer on the Power Pellet - go a bit too far by the end; it's challenge enough to adjust to Funky and Spunky jumping alongside Pac-Man.

I really, really wish the player could see the full board. The larger sprites are cute, but boy are they ever a liability, particularly as the game goes on and you have more and more ghosts to worry about.