Collection essentials #561: Pac-Man Vs. / Pac-Man World 2 (GC)

Pac-Man World 2 is a platformer that had previously been released as a standalone title in 2002. It’s an adequate 3D platformer that sold pretty well thanks to featuring Pac-Man, and in my opinion the coolest thing about it is that you can unlock some old arcade Pac-Man games to freely play. This game is not what this post is going to primarily be about, as I want to focus on the game that it’s bundled with. 

Pac-Man Vs. is a game that Shigeru Miyamoto himself, King Nintendo, was largely responsible for. The game was initially designed as a way to show off what can be done with the GBA-to-GC link cable, and Namco (owners of Pac-Man) greenlit Nintendo on making it into a full and proper release. It’s a multiplayer game that’s light on content, so it didn’t make sense for it to be a full-on $50 game by itself on store shelves. But Nintendo found alternative ways to distribute it. The best-known was for the budget re-release of Pac-Man World 2 in 2004, as a bonus inclusion.

As a kid, I sometimes imagined the possibility of a multiplayer Pac-Man game in which one player controls the yellow guy and other players control the ghosts trying to catch him. I’m sure many others had the same fantasy. Pac-Man Vs. is those fantasies come true! 

Now, simply copying the original Pac-Man and letting human players manually control the ghosts wouldn’t actually work. Such an arrangement would be brutally unfair to whoever’s controlling Pac-Man, as human ghosts could easily conspire to trap him. So Nintendo had to get creative in how they designed Pac-Man Vs. so that it would actually be fair.

The objective of the game is to score a certain amount of points, the threshold for which is chosen at the start of the game. One player starts as Pac-Man, while the other three start as ghosts (and there’s one way the balance is shifted, as in the original game there are four ghosts). It’s possible for ghosts to gain points by eating fruit, but not very much. Pac-Man is the one who really scores lots of points, and whichever ghosts catches him gets to become Pac-Man for the next round and start racking up their score. 

Now, here’s where the GBA link cable comes in. Whoever is playing as Pac-Man gets to use the connected GBA and play on that little screen. The three ghosts play on the TV, and their view of the maze is quite limited, which is another way the game is balanced. If the ghosts could see the entire maze at all times, it would be too easy for them to gang up and trap Pac-Man. If a ghost eats a fruit, however, then their vision is temporarily increased quite a bit, so there’s extra incentive for Pac-Man to try to eat it first. 

As gameplay goes on, Charles Martinet serves as the narrator using his Mario voice. You never see Mario and he’s never actually mentioned, so I guess technically you can’t truly say that it’s Mario, but…come on, it’s Mario. He will announce things such as when a fruit appears or when Pac-Man eats a power pellet, which I think is probably good to make sure nobody misses what’s going on.

There are several different mazes to play on, which offer a welcome amount of variety. Other than that, there’s really nothing else to Pac-Man Vs. But that’s fine, because there doesn’t really need to be. The concept is executed well, and not bloated with anything extra beyond what it needed to have.

When I first heard about Pac-Man Vs. (probably in Nintendo Power magazine), I knew I had to have it. My parents enjoyed Ms. Pac-Man, and controlling the ghosts was something I had fantasized about. I’m pretty sure I got it for Christmas in 2004, which my parents must have loved since it was a budget release and thus cheaper than the average new game. Over the years, I have enjoyed bringing it out with various friends and family when looking for something to play for a group of four. It’s a great concept executed very well.

Pac-Man Vs. has been rereleased a few times. But the rereleases aren’t necessarily convenient to play since they require multiple systems. The GameCube version is still a surprisingly affordable and reasonable way to play Pac-Man Vs., and it’s my version of choice. Being a fan of local multiplayer video games, this one is a no-doubt quintessential essential in my collection. Any local fans who want to try it out ought to message me and let me know!