Namco Museum: Arcade Pac is a compilation of:
- Namco Museum
- Pac-Man: Championship Edition 2 Plus
Namco Museum collects some classic Namco games.
The games included are:
- Pac-Man
- Pac-Man VS.
- Dig Dug
- Galaga
- Galaga ’88
- The Tower of Druaga
- Rolling Thunder
- Rolling Thunder 2
- Sky Kid
- Splatterhouse
- Tank Force
Pac-Man: Championship Edition 2 is the sequel to Pac-Man: Championship Edition and the reworked version Pac-Man: Championship Edition DX. The idea of a fast-paced and hectic sequel to the original arcade game is still the main concept, but now with entirely different gameplay mechanics. Pac-Man still navigates mazes, eats dots, collects fruits and avoids ghosts. The game offers three modes: an interactive Tutorial, the main Score Attack mode and additional challenges in the Adventure mode.
Score Attack consists of ten courses with four variants for each one, unlocked gradually: Single Train, Regular, Extreme and Practice. The goal is always to get as many points as possible to get ranked from E up to A with five minutes on the clock, except for Practice where ten minutes are provided and no ranking. Controls consists of movement in four directions with an additional action to brake quickly. Cornering is also still possible by inputting and holding a direction before a corner is reached, rewarded with a faster turn. Many mazes have exits causing Pac-Man to appear on the other side, but also portals that make him appear at another part of the maze. In a single Score Attack game multiple mazes are completed in succession until time runs out, always as variants of each other with different lay-outs for dots, ghosts and navigation. To move on to a new maze, which is done almost instantly with a quick motion, a piece of fruit needs to be picked up at a central location. It however only appears after having eaten a number of dots until the ‘next stage’ gauge is full, and not necessarily all of them. As soon as the fruit spawns Pac-Man needs to get back and grab it, to instantly start in the next configuration with the main ghosts still in the same position.
Bombs help with this, but in a new way. There is only a limited amount of them and instead of pushing back all ghosts as in the previous games, they now make Pac-Man jump and return to the central position. It helps him to get out of difficult situations, but also allows him to pick up the fruit quickly when it spawns. Ghost have become less dangerous compared to the previous games. There are sleeping ghosts that can be woken up and for most of them it is possible to bump into multiple times without harm as they only block the way. This is different for the four main ghosts (Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde). They collect the minion ghosts in a ghost train just like the previous game, using them as a shield and blocking passages with the trail. A power pill allows Pac-Man to eat the ghosts including entire trains for large amount of points by starting from the leader. This can only be done by predicting where the ghost train will move. In the Single Train variant there is only a single train, but in the Regular mode there are up to four. Eating an entire train is now shown as a 3D animation using a different perspective.
The main ghosts are the only ones that can harm Pac-Man. In the previous games the action would often slow down significantly when a collision, always fatal, was imminent, but here is handled differently. There is no slowdown but the main ghosts can be hit multiple times without penalty. After a certain amount of hits in succession however, they become angry and move at a very fast speed. The player either needs to eat them with a power pill or find a way to outrun them until they calm down, or move away to prevent successive hits. In the Extreme variant only a single hit makes them angry. When hit by an angry one Pac-Man loses a life until they are gone, but collisions with other ghosts have now become very common. Sometimes extra lives can be picked up and at times power pills and fruits can move as well so they need to be chased. Eventually they run out of steam and slow down. Some levels have boss battles with a giant ghost moving through the screen, blocking off large parts of the maze while it is moving.
For each game the player can choose and unlock different maze visuals, backgrounds, character sets, camera viewpoints and background music. The Adventure mode has gameplay similar to Score Attack, but offers very specific challenges with a limited amount of time and different difficulty levels. Scores can be compared worldwide on leaderboards. The PS4 version contains a theme and avatar based on the game.
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