Pac-Man Vs.
- December 08, 2003 00:00 AM PST
Connectivity meets wakka-wakka-wakka.
Shigeru Miyamoto will never be accused of having too few unusual ideas. His latest is a collaboration with Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani that re-engineers the dot-chomping classic as a multiplayer power struggle. It�s just weird enough to be worth owning for posterity.There�s no single-player game�you�ll need at least two people and one Game Boy Advance system (with a GameCube link cable). On the big screen, three ghosts search for Pac-Man, but they can see only a small amount of the maze at any time. On the GBA, Pac-Man has the traditional top-down view of the whole playfield, but he�s outnumbered three to one. If a ghost catches the Pac, the roles switch (read: The GBA is passed to a new player), and the hunter becomes the hunted. If a monster grabs the fruit first, their field of view widens, making Pac easier to track. Cherries are suddenly a matter of life and death.
Maybe it�s just the stress of multiplayer hijinks, but Pac-Man seems to move agonizingly slow; this wild goose chase could be more wild. The GBA directional controls feel a little mushy, but all wrong turns on the GameCube end of things are the players� faults. The announcing is handled by none other than Mario, which gets annoying fast. Graphically, the game resembles Namco�s old coin-op Pac-Mania.
You can get Pac-Man Vs. only as part of another purchase (it�s bundled with the GameCube versions of I-Ninja, R: Racing Evolution, or the budget-priced Pac-Man World 2), but if you�re a regular multiplayer gamer, this should be in your collection.
