I’m Not Your Pal, Friend

I will admit that while I knew there were a ton of Pac-Man games out there I hadn’t really done a deep dive into the classic series before now. I, like most gamers, had played both Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, the two games most often put into Namco compilations, and I also had a copy of Jr. Pac-Man on my Atari back in the day (because, yes, I am not young). But while I knew these titles, I didn’t realize just how many other games there were in this series, nor the weird places, diversions, dips, and whorls the series would go through between its two corporate masters, Namco and Bally Midway.

One side wanted to push the concept of Pac-Man in weird directions, ways that the arcade public wasn’t interested in, generally speaking. Namco didn’t want to make a staid and traditional Pac-Man sequel, which is noble and a fair idea, but where they pushed the series with Super Pac-Man was far from the concept people were familiar with. Meanwhile, Bally Midway wanted more of the basic Pac-Man experience that they could feed to hungry fans. They followed up Ms. Pac-Man with the likes of Pac-Man Plus, which was just more Pac-Man, and then Baby Pac-Man, which was Pac-Man but with pinball as well. These ideas, while interesting, also began to lose the interest of the arcade public. Had Pac-Man been pushed too far? Was there still more life left in the concept?

A game like Pac and Pal can be seen as an argument for both sides. On the one hand, the game is a clear improvement over Super Pac-Man, with a refined gameplay loop that was more frenetic and more interesting. At the same time, though, the game didn’t really feel like Pac-Man anymore, despite the inclusion of the yellow puck hero and the familiar ghosts. If those two characters were changed, nothing about this game would scream Pac-Man at all. And that, right there, was the problem. While Namco had created a solid title here, no one was interested because it wasn’t the familiar Pac-Man they knew and loved. It just wasn’t the sequel anyone expected.

The game is built on the basics of Super Pac-Man, pushing that game’s concept even further. Like in that game, Pac finds himself in a maze where many of the passages have locked walls blocking them. Items hide inside these locked rooms, and Pac has to find a way in. There are cards scattered around the stage which will open certain rooms, allowing Pac to get into those rooms and eat the fruits (or other items) lurking within. Naturally, our yellow hero has to eat (although we’ll get to that) all the items to clear the stage and move on.

The trouble is that the ghosts are there as well, and if Pac touches a ghost, he dies. Thankfully there’s a special wand he can collect (in place of the power pellets). The wand makes him temporarily invincible, and it also gives him a special power: he can shoot a soundwave from his mouth, stunning the ghosts. While stunned, the ghosts cannot move and they won’t do any damage. This allows our hero free access to get the items. But he does have one other complication: his pal. This little green “friend” will wander around the maze, collecting the items. If he takes the item back to the ghost home box before Pac eats it, that steals points from the hero’s bonus. It’s best if he eats everything, whether his friend is helping or not.

The basic gameplay does feel fairly similar to Super Pac-Man. As the hero, you move around the stage, collecting the unlocking items (cards here, instead of keys, although a key is one of the items you can eat in the game). Then, with the room unlocked, you can go and get the item within. You can unlock a few doors at once, although the game does seem to limit how many can be open at a time, so you can try to plan routes to get items, avoid ghosts, and survive. Already that can feel like a tough challenge.

The little green pal, who is named Miru, adds a real wrinkle to the whole experience. Miru is “helpful”, in that he can collect the items and take them to home base. But because you get less bonus points at the end of the round for any items Miru stores that you don’t eat, you really want to chase the green guy around to get the items. This can force you to rethink paths and put yourself into further danger just to get an item and add to your bonus pool. It really ups the frenetic nature of the game.

And you can add to that the fact that Miru will even grab the power wands. If he stashes one of those at the home base spot they’re lost for that round and that’s one less item you can use to save your bacon. That’s what really turns Miru from a helpful ally, since he does your job for you and is invincible so you don’t have to protect him, into a real problem. There’s nothing more annoying than seeing Miru run off with the wand you were going to grab, leaving you stuck between a bunch of ghosts with no chance of escape.

Honestly, I really like the gameplay loop of Pac and Pal. The constant shifts of items, the way Miru moves things around, the struggle to keep on top of everything as all these pieces are moving, makes for a far more interesting and challenging experience. It doesn’t feel as staid and basic as Super Pac-Man (which changed the formula of the original game so much that it felt full) all while taking the bits of that game that worked and reinventing it into something even better. This really uses the ideas of Super Pac-Man in the best ways possible.

Plus, I think the little tune that plays while you move Pac around the screen is pretty darn catchy. Instead of the “woo-woo” noise that played in the previous games as the ghosts moved around, we instead have a little toe-tapper jingle that plays on a loop. It’s light and fun, a small frivolity that hardly gets old even as it loops over and over again. I didn’t really think Pac-Man needed music, and for the most part that’s true, but Pac and Pal shows that with the right music the tone of the game can be set even better.

With all that said, this is still a very different game from the core Pac-Man experience. Anyone that didn’t like the changes to the formula that Super Pac-Man brought in likely wouldn’t like this game, either. It has even more alterations, more changes that really push the concept of what a Pac-Man game is even supposed to be. And, again, if you changed the hero and the enemies but kept everything else, this game wouldn’t even feel like Pac-Man at all. We’ve traveled so far from the core we’re practically in a different game series.

This might have been different if Bally Midway hadn’t been making their own titles (like Ms. Pac-Man and Pac-Man Plus) that kept the core gameplay loop alive past the point Namco was done with it. Had those games not come out, maybe players would be more amenable to what Namco was doing, more receptive to the changes so they could see the overall picture. But that wasn’t how the series played out, and the two sides of the franchise really felt like they diluted and shifted the vision for the series.

I think Pac and Pal is really fun, but there’s no denying that it’s hardly a Pac-Man game at all. It’s a fun little maze chase game that can just about stand on its own, but likely wouldn’t have done better if so much of the franchise as a whole were different. I get why this game fell into obscurity soon after it was released because it is an odd fit for this franchise and I doubt audiences really cared. The game deserved better, though, so if you have the time and inclination it’s worth firing up an emulator and giving the game a whirl. It’s really a solid title.