Taking a look at Pac-Man, released at the dawn of the 80s, it’s astounding how much Namco’s little cheese wheel altered the course of arcade history. Chalk it up to one of many things: the instantly recognizable characters, the impeccable gameplay, the hidden depth behind the Ghost’s AI and, by association, the “personalities” of Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde… Each of these individual factors could have made it a bonafide classic, but these unique elements seamlessly coalesced into a certified magnum opus, a work that not only became the face of Namco as a corporation, but of arcades and the U.S. arcade scene as a whole. Extending beyond video games, Pac-Man became a symbol, an international pop culture icon, a somehow-still-relevant vanguard of a bygone era of gaming and a figurehead of 80s culture.
Innovating on a masterpiece is a hefty challenge, especially for something as unchallenged as Pac-Man: despite a slew of creative sequels throughout the 1980s, and a brief foray into 3D platform mediocrity in the early 2000s, the franchise had become somewhat stagnant, reduced to the high prestige befitting a idol of the industry. Of course, in the grand scheme of things, the solution wasn’t a top-to-bottom recreation of what made the series iconic: Instead of reincarnation and rejuvenation, we have a celebration of what audiences through history love about him.
Hypothetically, Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 is the first real evolution the silly orb man has seen in a long time; even within the context of the “Championship Edition” subseries, CE2 takes the purest reading of the 80s original and attempts to modernize it while staying true to its roots. In theory, it’s a modern transfusion into an old-school body, a refresh on an outdated mainstay. In practice, it’s a personification of what makes arcade games mechanically breathtaking in a way that seemingly died with the onset of console gaming.
Perhaps it’s oversimplifying, but CE2 is the closest the franchise has gotten to the excellence of the original release all those years ago. Somewhere between the freeform design funneling toward a singular endpoint, rewarding the player for learning the game’s rules as opposed to endlessly fighting against them, with the lofty goal of mastery holding precedence over “winning” or “losing”, it reminded me of untold hours under dingy lights, bathed in the flash of flickering CRTs and embraced by battered cabinets, the ambient chaos of a hundred soundchips begging for attention. I’m transported back to the decade-plus I toiled away at utter perfection in Galaga, the lackadaisical afternoons in decaying malls where hundreds of dollars were wasted on ill-calibrated light-gun shooters, the summer nights in cluttered garages running brackets on bootleg MAME set-ups, the screeching cacophony of rhythm games demanding undivided focus in a convention ballroom… All the sounds, sights, and feelings derived from a life-long adoration of arcade games.
In my limited experience with Championship Edition 2, nearly eight hours of studying the mechanical minutia and falling into a state of Zen Pac-Mania, I’ve felt a reignition for a passion that had fallen away from me. Most of my writing on here centers on the emotional connection I feel with a game, what it means to me on some sort of fleeting level, and this isn’t different: my time with CE2 was wonderful, but my complete respect for it relies solely on what it represents to me, as an exemplification of the beauty of the arcade experience. It’s something that’s impossible to disconnect, and I don’t see the point in trying to.
Innovating on a masterpiece is a hefty challenge, especially for something as unchallenged as Pac-Man: despite a slew of creative sequels throughout the 1980s, and a brief foray into 3D platform mediocrity in the early 2000s, the franchise had become somewhat stagnant, reduced to the high prestige befitting a idol of the industry. Of course, in the grand scheme of things, the solution wasn’t a top-to-bottom recreation of what made the series iconic: Instead of reincarnation and rejuvenation, we have a celebration of what audiences through history love about him.
Hypothetically, Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 is the first real evolution the silly orb man has seen in a long time; even within the context of the “Championship Edition” subseries, CE2 takes the purest reading of the 80s original and attempts to modernize it while staying true to its roots. In theory, it’s a modern transfusion into an old-school body, a refresh on an outdated mainstay. In practice, it’s a personification of what makes arcade games mechanically breathtaking in a way that seemingly died with the onset of console gaming.
Perhaps it’s oversimplifying, but CE2 is the closest the franchise has gotten to the excellence of the original release all those years ago. Somewhere between the freeform design funneling toward a singular endpoint, rewarding the player for learning the game’s rules as opposed to endlessly fighting against them, with the lofty goal of mastery holding precedence over “winning” or “losing”, it reminded me of untold hours under dingy lights, bathed in the flash of flickering CRTs and embraced by battered cabinets, the ambient chaos of a hundred soundchips begging for attention. I’m transported back to the decade-plus I toiled away at utter perfection in Galaga, the lackadaisical afternoons in decaying malls where hundreds of dollars were wasted on ill-calibrated light-gun shooters, the summer nights in cluttered garages running brackets on bootleg MAME set-ups, the screeching cacophony of rhythm games demanding undivided focus in a convention ballroom… All the sounds, sights, and feelings derived from a life-long adoration of arcade games.
In my limited experience with Championship Edition 2, nearly eight hours of studying the mechanical minutia and falling into a state of Zen Pac-Mania, I’ve felt a reignition for a passion that had fallen away from me. Most of my writing on here centers on the emotional connection I feel with a game, what it means to me on some sort of fleeting level, and this isn’t different: my time with CE2 was wonderful, but my complete respect for it relies solely on what it represents to me, as an exemplification of the beauty of the arcade experience. It’s something that’s impossible to disconnect, and I don’t see the point in trying to.
maradona
2 years ago