Pac-Man Does Platforming

While Bally Midway was continuing to iterate on the basic Pac-Man formula (that is aside from their one really weird diversion, Professor Pac-Man), original creators Namco knew there was only so much life in the same basic maze chase. They felt like they had to do something different, to push the character forward so that his adventures didn’t get stale. While it’s arguable how well their efforts worked in games like Super Pac-Man and Pac & Pal, they did at least try to do more with Pac-Man than just another Pac-Man. Bally Midway had already done that the best it could be done with Ms. Pac-Man. It was hard to do better.

Eventually it was clear that all the life had been sucked out of the standard formula and something drastically new and different was needed. That, plus the ongoing success of the Pac-Man Saturday morning cartoon, meant there was a chance to take the series in a radical new direction, to try and make something very different with the Pac-Man name that would bring in arcade players, new and old. It couldn’t just be a maze chase, it couldn’t do what had already been done so many times before. It was time to be bold.

The resulting game was Pac-Land, and it was about as different to the normal maze chase as Professor Pac-Man had been. Only there was one key difference: Pac-Land was fun. It came out and quickly became a resounding success, ranking as one of the top five arcade games for 1985. And sure, while it might feel kind of dated now in comparison to games that even came out within a few years of its release, it is still often hailed as a benchmark for the form, one that would go on to inspire so many other creators in those formative years.

Unlike previous games in the Pac-Man franchise, Pac-Land isn’t a maze chase game at all. Not even a little. Instead it’s a platformer. In the game, our yellow hero is tasked with taking a lost fairy and returning her to Fairyland. To do this, Pac runs, leaps, dodges across three stages before reaching the door to the fabled land. Then, in the last stage of the act, the Fairy Queen grants Pac a pair of magical shoes that lets him hover and float across stages, moving back towards home to repeat the loop again and again.

Naturally, because this is a Pac-Man title, there are some little additions that bring in the franchise’s flair. For starters, power pellets are scattered throughout stages. Gobbling one of these will grant Pac the expected temporary invincibility while also allowing him to eat ghosts for points. Ghosts are the major enemy of the game, and they’ll be seen in the cities, forests, lakes, fortresses, and castles that make up the various stages of each act. Pac can also find metal helmets hidden in some areas if he pushes against specific objects. This helmet protects him from objects (like mini-ghosts) thrown at him from above. And there are invisibility pellets as well which don’t give Pac the ability to gobble ghosts but it does protect him from damage for a short time. And, yes, there’s plenty of fruit to eat for points, if that’s your thing.

Pac-Land came out at a time when platformers were still finding their feet (pun unintended). While there had been some platformers before, with the likes of Space Panic and Pitfall, the conventions of the form had not yet been fully established. What the goals were, the kinds of things that could be found, how health and damage were rated, all of this was still new, with rules still being thrown around to see what stuck. Pac-Land codified a lot of the basics of the form, letting other creators see what Namco did so they could use those ideas and push them further.

One key thing that Namco did that sort of pushed gaming further was in the controls. They had two buttons in the center of the console, right and left, that you pressed to move our yellow hero. You could also rapidly tap them to make him run faster. This is obviously a precursor to games like Super Mario Bros. using D-pad controls (at least on the NES) and having a dedicated run button for more speed. Miyamoto has even gone on record saying Pac-Land was an influence on his game.

The power-ups also clearly lend themselves well for future applications. The metal hat granting some protection is similar to some power-ups other games would use, while the power pellets (while coming in from previous Pac-Man games) would lend itself well to damaging upgrades like those seen in the Super Mario SeriesHe's the world's most famous plumber and the biggest face in Nintendo's stable, a character so ubiquitous you already knew we were talking about Mario even before we said his name.. And, of course, there was the fact that you could jump on enemies in this game. While that wouldn’t damage them, or you, it did add a certain idea about changing up what damage even meant in all contexts. Would Mario jump and kill enemies if Pac hadn’t first walked on them?

With that said, not everything about this game was great. For starters, those same controls that were so different from the single joystick standard of arcades were also kind of finicky and hard to work with. There are plenty of spots in the game where the slippy, weird controls of the buttons were just as likely to land you in an enemy instead of letting you avoid them. And getting Pac to the right speed for some especially long jumps always felt harder than it should, frequently landing the hero in the drink instead of on safe land.

And the game is just hard as nails even at the best of times. While getting through one stage wasn’t so bad, actually reaching the end of the first act so you could get back to your Pac family was arduous. If you could even pull that off then you had to contend with seven more loops of the game that changed up zones and got progressively harder, all before the game looped all the way back and started the process over again. There was a real sense of accomplishment in completing all four stages in a loop, but doing it eight times? Yeah, most arcade players weren’t getting anywhere near there.

The loops also weren’t that interesting once you really got deep into the game. You’ll see the same stages, in similar configurations, over and over, and while some minor details were changed from one loop to the next, Pac-Land is simplistic enough that there were only so many things that could be changed. It starts to feel very rote and repetitive at a certain point. Super Mario Bros. certainly changed that up with greater variety to its levels even though it reused plenty of background and design elements throughout.

Pac-Land isn’t a bad game, but it certainly feels a tad primitive now even in comparison to what would come soon after. Coming out when it did it served as a great lesson in what to do and what not to do, but it was a lesson all the same. Pac-Land had to walk so that the likes of Mario and Sonic could run. We needed this game at the time, but it is hard to go back and enjoy it the same way you might have all the way back in 1985. I love what the game tries to do, I just don’t always love how it does it.