Despite how my taste has evolved over time to prefer gamey-games rooted in arcade sensibilities, I still really struggle with sticking to many older arcade games. They're usually games that I'm able to appreciate and have fun with from time to time, but am always intimidated by in some way or another. Nevermind the fact that I've never been any good at them to begin with, being stuck in a never-ending loop of repetition to test my endurance has never been my preferred way to play (this may also be why I've been really into shmups lately to scratch my arcade itch, their difficulty is nigh impenetrable at the start, but after some practice, runs usually become 30 minutes to an hour at most). Even in more modern games that encourage score-chasing like Bayonetta, I love how inviting they tend to be to pick up for an afternoon and try to get the best rank on a level or two.

Now I don't want to be dishonest and say that none of this applies to old arcade games, that just wouldn't be true. Take the original Pac-Man for example: I can rarely get past the 6th level (let alone make it to the kill screen) without floundering and losing all my lives, but I'd be lying if I said the act of trying to beat my personal best wasn't invigorating. I understand the appeal of a game that can go on forever if you're skilled enough, I just personally lack the dexterity and mental fortitude to push my runs just that little bit longer for more than a few runs at a time. I think this is part of why Pac-Man Championship Edition is so innately appealing to me.

The most obvious change in Championship Edition is the addition of a hard-set time limit, something that undoubtedly changes the fundamental flow and pace of the game, but one that makes it easier to crack into for a more casual player like myself. It's way easier to justify starting a run of an arcade game when you know definitively that an end is in sight, and that it's easy to attain. In the case of CE, it means that each run becomes far more sharp and focused in the short-term, compared to the long-term goal of the vanilla game potentially being shot down and erased in a few quick mistakes. Aforementioned failure just feels better when runs aren't super draining.

More impressive is the way CE adapts and modernizes the original design document of Pac-Man without feeling like a completely different experience. Less pellets on screen at once that are compressed together means progress is snappier and less time is spent traversing through empty lanes, the ever evolving layout prevents runs from becoming tiresome and makes it harder to autopilot, and only refreshing one half of the maze at once means that players are forced to move back and forth constantly with meaningful intent. All of this under the pressure of a time limit and the ever-present yet obfuscated scaling speed of the game makes each run a frantic test of your ability to juggle a dozen different tasks at once. As a good example, in vanilla you may want to camp the maze and line up every ghost next to an Energizer to maximize your points, but in CE you don't have time to waste so you should frequently just take whatever chance you can get to use it. But if you ever do line everything up correctly it feels far more satisfying to achieve in a timely manner. Same goes for chaining energizers for a long ass combo, I don't think I've felt anything as electrifying as managing to gobble up 10 ghosts in a single combo in quite some time. Every little adjustment feels simultaneously tasteful to the original intent of the game while still acting as the perfect bullet point on an already arguably perfect game. How many games like this can you think of that only subtly iterate on the original and end up feeling definitive? That'd be like the 2D Mario games feeling conclusive after New Super Mario Bros. or something, I can't think of many examples where this has happened outside of this.

Despite being a little dry on content, Pac-Man Championship Edition is a game I can tell I'll be playing for a very long time, and might just be my first meaningful breakthrough into the original game. Nothing substantial was removed from the transition from vanilla to CE so skills acquired in one should theoretically carry over from one to the other for me. I think the sign of a truly masterful iteration is one that smooths out the original experience without completely invalidating it. One that feels modern while still keeping it's old soul in one piece. CE won't stop people from playing vanilla, hell it won't even stop Namco from continuing to make Pac-Man games, but as it stands, I think this is the most impressive mic-dropping moment in the gaming industry, and I don't foresee this being more than a once-in-a-generation moment.
Seriously though I have no clue why it doesn't at least include an optional endless mode, that alone would likely justify this as the definitive Pac-Man game and would genuinely make everybody happy. There's no reason it shouldn't be there. What the hell man. Port this to Steam so somebody can mod it in Namco!!!

edit: yeah so apparently this is getting ported to steam and new platforms in like a month and i had no idea lmao, y'all better buy it when it drops just saying

Reviewed on Apr 01, 2022


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