To celebrate Pac-Man's 26th birthday, Namco Bandai created Pac-Man Championship Edition. Featuring a stylish and hip appearance, new modes and classic gameplay, this Xbox Live Arcade game demands attention.
Pac-Man's concept remains roughly the same. Players guide the yellow guy through a series of confined mazes, avoiding ghosts until he finds a power pellet. Once he digests one, the tables turn on his opposition and he can hunt them down, earning big points while eating them up.
The similarities between the arcade original and the Championship Edition end there. Championship features a fun new style, forcing players to work their way through each maze, constantly unlocking new strings of dots. The screen basically has two halves, the left side and the right side. Once all the dots have been consumed on one side, a piece of fruit appears on the other. After eating this fruit, a shockwave flows across the empty half of the maze, replenishing it with dots and power pills. On occasion, the pattern throws gamers a curveball, either littering the screen with multiple power pills or providing none at all. Using multiple power pills strategically introduces a new combo system, allowing players to string together the ghosts they eat to bump up their score into the thousands. The point value doesn't end at the default 1600 -- it multiplies ferociously.
Pac-Man Championship Edition has six modes to choose from, each with a pre-set time limit varying between five to 10 minutes. Each one offers a particular spin on gameplay, keeping things fresh. The Freeway Mode ramps the speed up double-time, almost at the same pace as the modified Ms. Pac-Man arcade units. Pac-Man and the ghosts move around in a hurried frenzy, eventually gaining speed with each new string of dots that arrive. Darkness Mode deserves applause, too. The entire maze goes dark, forcing players to maneuver around unseen walls while trying to build a high score.
Graphics-wise, Pac-Man Championship Edition looks impressive. The mazes display in widescreen and feature neon lighting. In addition, Pac-Man and the ghosts display neat effects, including sparking and shadowing. The remixed music becomes repetitive, but still sounds great. The sound effects have been lifted straight from the arcade game, right down to Pac-Man's cute little death sound. The brief laser beam-like noise that plays with each new dot pattern can get annoying, though.
The Championship Edition has some faults beginning with the price -- a whopping 800 points. Given that the original game was not included, a better budget price of 400 points would have been more appropriate. The time limits cut the game short, too. Shouldn't the player have an opportunity to get a near-endless score like they can with the arcade original? Last but not least, it offers no multiplayer option. The game does have competitive leaderboards for each individual mode but multiplayer would've been awesome -- especially if one player controlled Pac-Man while the other controlled the ghosts, similar to the GameCube's Pac-Man Vs.
Pricing and multiplayer issues aside, Namco Bandai managed to reinvent a classic franchise. The extra modes make it worth playing through multiple times and the new presentation works reasonably well. Toru Iwatani, Pac-Man's creator, couldn't have had a fonder farewell to the gaming scene -- tip a hat to him and get some waka-waka on.
Final Score: 8 (out of 10)
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