Going way back to the beginning of what had become to be called Arcade games was Pac-man. Flashing forward years later it’s still is one of the only games that hasn’t had some sort of a direct sequel. Falling in the same lines of Tetris, Pac-man is one of those games that’s essentially perfect the way it is. Of course it’s gotten a slew of off shoots that go a different direction while still calling itself Pac-man, but no real sequel has ever been made until now.

Pac-man Championship Edition is a true sequel to the original already available on the Xbox Live Arcade. At first glance you’ll be hard pressed to see any real difference until you play it. This new version of Pac-man comes with six modes in total. The first three of them are essentially just an expanded mode of the original game with the new touches and different time constraints. Championship Mode gives you 5 minutes to score as many points as you can. I won’t be explaining how Pac-man is played, because if you have never played Pac-man in the 25+ years it’s been available in every form possible then you must be living underneath a rock and have no plans of playing this game anyway.

Initially this seems very much the same until you see the maze that you thought you had a grip of change, causing you to get a little bit flustered the first time it happens. Of course you get used to it after time, but it adds a feeling of uncertainty to the classic game play that we know and should love.

• Challenge Mode 1 is next up and at first this to seems the same, but this time you have a constantly evolving maze when Pac-man eats a fruit and a 10 minute time limit this time.
• Challenge Mode 2 is yet again another mode that of the like’s on Championship mode with a 10 minute timer and one very big difference. The entire portion of the grid that you rely on to make your decisions on which path to take are blackened out similar to the Pirate ship 8^th world levels of Super Mario Brothers 3 on the NES. Pac-man himself has a spotlight surrounding him that allows you to only see the immediately surrounding grid. This makes for a mode that is a fantastic shift in how you would play Pac-man without seeing where it is that your exactly going.

   

   

• Extra Mode 1 is another mode where Pac-man is in a maze that has entry ways around the maze on every level available. At first glance this seems very boring until you realize that the speed of Pac-man has been turned up to extraordinary portions causing great tension as you narrowly avoid constantly running into the ghost’ every few seconds.
• Extra Mode 2 has a 10 minute timer where you have the maze constantly changing shape on you making it very hard to get comfortable in what your strategy is going to be.
• Extra Mode 3 is what should be considered the toughest. The maze in this mode is very confined causing you to have to constantly eat power pellets to stay alive.

  

Extra modes aside, the thing that shines the most about Pac-man Championship Edition is the sound. Something that’s usually over looked, the sound in this game is fantastic. You probably won’t notice initially, but if you have any kind of surround sound setup you’ll love the sound of this game. It of course has all of the classic sounds of yester year, but what makes it sound so great is the spacial feeling the redone sound gives you. When you move Pac-man throughout the maze you’ll hear him move from one speaker to the next in coordination with what you see on screen. Everything seen on screen is spacially present in the sound. Pac-man maybe on the right of the maze and the ghost of the left, but you could easily have not been looking at your TV and still know where everything is just by the sound alone. Xbox Live Arcade game it maybe, but the sound is top notch albeit somewhat repetitive.

Pac-man Championship Edition is a worthy update to the franchise in it’s classic 2D form. Nostalgia alone will keep you coming back for more. Luckily enough for this game, the new mazes and additional modes give this game more than just another retread feeling that lots of games fall into. The asking price for this game at 800 Microsoft points is a little bit steep, but it’s ultimately worth every point.

I give Pac-man Championship Edition a 5 out of 5.

-William “thewilleffect” Bell-