Skip to main content

Pac-Land: An early side-scroller starring Pac-Man

Namco made a wise decision when they passed over Pac-Land in favor of its 1980 predecessor Pac-Man for the NES.

I expect Pac-Land attracted a fair amount of attention when it appeared in arcades in 1984. Not only did it feature one of the most popular video-game characters ever, but it introduced an entirely-new and exciting style of gameplay: side-scrolling platforming! Instead of navigating the same maze endlessly while gobbling up pellets, Pac-Man now has arms, legs, and a jaunty little hat! His new, anthropomorphic form was based on the Saturday morning cartoon. The ghosts, Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde, are still around, only now they employ cars, pogo sticks, airplanes, helicopters, and flying saucers in their quest to capture our yellow protagonist. Sue (from Ms. Pac-Man) slowly pursues Pac-Man, acting as a kind of timer.

Gameplay is straightforward: Pac-Man runs and jumps over obstacles and ditches, while avoiding ghosts and grabbing fruit for bonus points. The occasional Power Pellet still lets Pac-Man eat the ghosts, but he can also pick up a protective hat, which lets him absorb mini-ghosts dropped by ghosts in helicopters. Unfortunately, obtaining the hat requires pushing on random obstacles like tree stumps and fire hydrants. An interesting gimmick is that, after the third "round" (level) of each of the eight "trips" (worlds), Pac-Man returns a fairy to its home, and then has to go backwards through an approximation of the previous stages. At this point, the game fails to communicate that the fairy has given Pac-Man magic boots that let him jump in mid-air. At the beginning of 1-4, I found myself staring at a giant ditch, unsure what to do. I jumped into it and promptly earned a Game Over! Nice.

While this sounds like a decent game (and in 1984 arcades, I'm sure it was), the platforming is uninspired and repetitive and the controls slippery. It also uses a weird control scheme, where the directional pad jumps, B moves Pac-Man left, and A moves him right! To run, you have to double-tap a direction. After I died in the aforementioned ditch, I felt no desire to continue playing. This is one of those games that was probably great, until Super Mario Bros. came out and made it look ancient.

I've never seen Pac-Land in an arcade, but watching video of it, I was struck by how much better it looks than the Famicom port! The sprites and backgrounds are larger and more detailed. Forest levels have foreground effects that obscure Pac-Man and the ghosts. It seems a number of compromises were made to get this game onto the Famicom's 8-bit hardware. I would like to try the arcade version, which was included in Pac-Man Museum for the PS3 and Xbox 360 (an announced Wii U version was sadly canceled). I wouldn't be surprised if the original Pac-Land makes its way to Switch eventually.

The Famicom cartridge of Pac-Land

Pac-Land deserves credit for pioneering the side-scrolling platformer genre, but it's mostly a museum piece today.

Grade: C-

Gameplay: Sporadically fun or niche (12/20)
Theme: Interesting concept and characters, if generic (16/20)
Controls: Controls are functional, but frustrating (9/15)
Difficulty: Hard to the point of frustration (12/15)
Graphics: Doesn't look great (9/15)
Sound: Solid music, but nothing special (12/15)

Linked Review
"A fairly generic platformer, Pac-Land is best viewed as an interesting relic of the past. Stick to the mazes, Pac-Man."
– Lee Meyer, Nintendo Life, 5/10

Stats
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco
Genre: Platformer
Arcade release date: December 1984
Famicom release date: November 1985
Extend (Famicom): 30,000
My high score (Famicom): 57,100 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

SimCity: The OG city simulator still rocks

When I ordered an Analogue Super Nt to begin collecting and playing SNES games, I knew which game I wanted to play first: SimCity. This game hasn't been rereleased since the Wii Virtual Console in 2006! Analogue Super NT SimCity was created by Will Wright as a PC game, published in 1989. Nintendo worked with Maxis to have it ported to the Super Nintendo for their new console's launch. The SNES version is a huge improvement over the original, with better graphics, pop-up advice screens from Dr. Wright, and, most importantly, gifts. But let's start at the beginning. SimCity was the first ever city-simulation video game. Your goal is to build up a city as successfully as you can. You can play however you like, as it is not possible to "beat" the game, but the main achievement is reaching a population of 500,000, at which point your city becomes a "megalopolis." The maps are fairly small (and some have a lot of water), so the only way to achieve this is to h

Rock n' Roll Racing: 30th anniversary

Although not marketed as a sequel, anyone who has played Blizzard's RPM Racing will recognize Rock n' Roll Racing as its successor. They are both isometric racing games with weapons, similar to Rare's classic R.C. Pro-Am on the NES, but Rock n' Roll Racing is the superior game by far. You can enjoy Rock n' Roll Racing solo or with a second player. At the beginning, you choose your racer from six colorful, punky characters: Tarquinn, Snake, Cyberhawk, Ivan, Katarina, or Jake. Each is good at two skills from among acceleration, top speed, cornering, and jumping. Olaf, from The Lost Vikings , is secretly available by holding down L, R, and SELECT while Tarquinn is selected. Olaf is busted because he's good at all four skills! Four characters race and attack one another's vehicles with lasers, missiles, and mines. You begin with only one laser shot per lap. Between races, you can purchase additional shots and upgrade your vehicle's armor, tires, shock abso

Mega Man X: 30th anniversary

Thirty years ago Mega Man X brought Capcom's beloved blue bomber into the 16-bit era, to great acclaim. In a creative twist, Mega Man X (called X for short) is a new robot, not the original Mega Man . As with Super Metroid, Super Castlevania IV , and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past , Mega Man X uses the winning formula of remaking the original NES game but with more and better. Mega Man X, like his predecessor, faces eight robot masters, now called "Mavericks." Instead of "men," they are made in the image of animals: Chill Penguin, Storm Eagle, Launch Octopus, Spark Mandrill (a kind of monkey), Armored Armadillo, Sting Chameleon, Flame Mammoth, and Boomer Kuwanger (a Japanese stag beetle). An opening stage ends with X being defeated by the robot Vile, a henchman of Sigma, who wants to destroy humanity using something called "Reploids" (the Mavericks?). Fortunately, a "Maverick Hunter" robot named Zero jumps in to save X. He encourages