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Pacman review by Paleface
Pac-Man:
...is a little yellow pie with one slice missing.
...starts with three lives.
...earns more lives by getting points.
...gets points by eating things.
...eats dots and blinking power pellets.
...eats these dots in two-dimensional a blue maze.
...normally must run from four ghosts, who chase him.
...can eat the ghosts for a few seconds after eating a power pellet but he must be swift since they run away.
...covets fruit which appears in the center of the maze.
...may get two fruit per maze.
...must get the fruit quickly before they disappear.
...goes on to another level after eating all the dots.
...gets faster with each level but so does everything else.
...has 256 levels.
...loses a life when the ghosts catch him.
...is the top-selling game in arcade history.
The above was for those who have been living in a cave with no media access for the past twenty years (well, this version of the game can be played in a cave, but you get the point). After all this time Pac-Man remains as great as ever so the only question for a review is: how well does this version capture the original arcade Pac-Man? In the case of the NGPC the answer is: probably as perfectly as is possible, given the screen size limitations of a handheld.
I'm not gonna say it's ''arcade perfect'' because I can't say I remember the arcade version exactly, but as far as I can recall Pac-Man on the NGPC plays exactly like the arcade: it is very smooth, fast and surprisingly difficult. Those who've been playing watered-down versions (such as the GBC version) will have a rude surprise in store as those nasty ghosts nab you quicker than you can say ''Power Pellet.'' By the way, did you know each of those ghosts has their own personality? Yep. Pay attention and you'll notice that the red ghost is a bit faster than the others, the blue tends to wander a little, the pink likes to set up ''ambushes'' for you and the orange is your basic slow plodder. The AI in this game impresses me to this day!
A gameplay-enhancing surprise comes in the box: a little red rubber ring. ''What the heck is this?'' you'll probably exclaim. If you look closely you'll see that the ring has four evenly spaced, wide, shallow bumps around the inner side, and a little tab sticking out from the outside. Place this ring over the NGPC's control stick, orient the tab to match the notch right above the stick and press down gently: the ring fits snugly around the stick housing. Now play Pac-Man and you'll find that those wide, shallow bumps limit the diagonal movement of the stick so that it always moves either up, down, right or left. This makes controlling Pac-Man a much tighter experience: it's not that the game is unplayable without the ring by any means, it just feels more precise with the ring on. A nice extra from Namco, I can't think of any other NGPC game which provides additional hardware.
The sound in particular surprised me: it sounds awesome. The ''woo woo woo'' of the ghosts, the ''wakka wakka wakka'' of the Pacster scarfing dots, everything sounds just like it should. Truly a feast for the Pac-fan's ears.
Graphics, the trickiest aspect of the arcade to translate to handheld as the handheld screen simply doesn't have the resolution of the arcade, have been dealt with nearly as well as could be imagined. Namco offers you a choice: you can play in a zoomed-out version which gives a view of the whole maze at once in slightly lower resolution or you can play a zoomed-in view which shows about a quarter of the maze at once but has all the pixel detail of the arcade. Hardcore players will no doubt stick exclusively with the zoomed-out view. I, on the other hand, prefer the zoomed-in view: not only does it look much better than the rather chunky zoomed-out view but, to me, it offers a more exciting game as the entire screen shifts when you move and because, since you can't see the whole maze at once, you have to anticipate where the four ghosts are--is Pinky in front of you, or did she (call me crazy but somehow I always think of Pinky as female) duck around behind? This adds another layer of strategy and anticipation to the game; I'm not saying I wouldn't prefer a pixel-perfect full-screen view but the zoomed view has tough, original spin to it.
A few final graphics comments for detail freaks. In zoomed-in view the fruit and lives indicators float over the maze in the lower corners of the screen, rather a nice minimalist touch. If you pause while zoomed-in you can pan the screen about to see the full maze, a very nice feature indeed! You cannot, however, switch between zoom modes on the fly, which would have been nice. Oh and yes, the cut-scenes are in here too.
So why no perfect score? Wellsir, this may be play-perfect Pac-Man but there could have been a few extras added, things gamers have come to expect these days. Mainly, it's rather shocking that you can't enter and save your high scores. It would also have been nice to be able to switch zoom modes on the fly, as mentioned above. Still, Pac-addicts will find the NGPC has the most faithful handheld port of the classic game yet as all of the arcade's speed, challenge, hypnotic sound, simplicity and nearly endless replayability come to the handheld perfectly intact: don't settle for anything less!
Score: 8/10
