First of all, this is one of the best renderings of Pac-Man I've ever seen. Round as hell with stubby little arms and legs, bouncing around, screaming while throwing fireballs, I can't get enough of him in this game. Part of me wonders if Smash should've gone with this game as the primary inspiration for his moveset instead of Pac-Land.

Of course, the reason Smash didn't do that is that this is barely a Pac-Man game. Pretty much any other character could take his place and make as much sense if the dots, power pellets, and ghosts are removed. In fact, looking at the developer's previous game proves this. Even if you didn't know about this previous game, you can feel how forced the Pac-Man elements are. The power pellet only allows you to eat ghosts, which there aren't that many of in levels, and all the other enemies are unaffected by it.

Ignoring this aspect of the game, playing it is fun, at least early on. The movement takes some getting used to due to how slippery Pac-Man is, but once you get a feel for it and his bounce, as well as the great swinging mechanic, it's easy to get into the game's rhythm. The biggest problem here is that Pac-in-Time outstays its welcome. There are 50 levels in this game, and they only get longer and bigger as the game goes on. There are also only 5 themes to spread across these 50 levels, so the first hour or so may drive you insane over how you're still seeing the same grass levels with the same music (pretty good music, though). What you do in these levels gets stale, and around level 13, after two days of playing the game, I had to call it quits after dying and not having it in me to get back to where I was. While Pac-in-Time is one of the better Amiga-style Platformers (derogatory), it still ultimately is an Amiga-style Platformer.