| toadnick's Last Game Reviews |
Pac-Man (Namco)
03-08-14 06:31 PM
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Port review: Pac-Man(NES)
Today, I'm taking a look at Pac-Man on the NES. This game had 3 releases in the US: Official Tengen release, unofficial Tengen release, and Namco release. All of them are based off Namco's 1984 Famicom port, and they're all the same, bar the copyright information on the title screen.
This port screams NES. The colors, the sounds, everything. It's faithful to the arcade version rather nicely- if you've played Pac-Man, you probably know that it's about a yellow circle named Pac-Man. Pac-Man has to eat dots and avoid ghosts. If Pac-Man eats all the dots on a maze board, he gets to go to the next level(tip- all the mazes are the same). However, each maze has four Power Pellets. If Pac-Man eats one of these, the ghosts, Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde, turn dark blue and can be eaten by Pac-Man. But beware! It's only a small amount of time before the tables turn back.
Now, on to port differences. Along with the sounds sounding very... NESish, there's something odd about the graphics. Can you guess what they are? I don't know, maybe it's that THE CHARACTER'S BODIES DEFY THE LAWS OF MAZE WALLS. Seriously, Pac-Man and the ghosts stick through the maze, and it looks weird, but it's not really that distracting, but it looks a little weird when you think about it. However, that obviously wasn't the goal of this port. The goal of this port was to provide a great gaming experience close to the original arcade version of Pac-Man. Did they do that?
Well, what do you think. Of course they did, and while this isn't held in regard as a nice Pac-Man port, because, let's be honest, no one has ever really bothered to look at all of them, this port is great. I give Pac-Man on the NES a 7 out of 10.
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Pac-Mania
03-06-14 05:24 PM
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Port review: Pac-Mania(Sega Genesis)
Hello there. Today I'm reviewing Pac-Mania on the Sega Genesis. It's a port of the 1987 Namco arcade game(which was distributed by Atari in the United States) that was published by Tengen in 1991. This port was developed by Sculptured Software, who have done a number of ports, such as Mario Bros. on the Atari 8-bit family, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego on the Amiga, and others. This is a review of an Arcade game port, so I'm going to compare almost everything about this version of Pac-Mania to the arcade version of the game. Let's begin!
If I had to describe Pac-Mania in 6 words, it would be simple- 3-D Pac-Man with a jump button. And that's basically what it is. Unlike Pac-Man, however, Pac-Mania has 4 different maze boards instead of just one, and they all have a unique style to them, whether it be a maze of Legos or a giant sandbox on the sea. This port has a number of options: 1 or 2 players, with one controller or both, 4 difficulty settings, and a Pac-Booster that speeds up Pac-Man, this feature of which was in most of Tengen's Pac-Man series ports. The options screen even has a little Pac-Mania maze medley. That's nice.
The Genesis soundfont isn't that compelling, so seeing that the music and sound is very Genesis-like(Richy electric guitar sounds, at least that's how I think of it) isn't a surprise. However, there are a variety of sounds that are close to the arcade version. It's half close, half not close. The graphics are... Mediocre. They're not very colorful, and it's weird seeing Pac-Man with a yellow tongue, among other oddities. Pac-Mania was a very colorful arcade game, so this is sort of a letdown. Not even the title screen looks that good- the title screen of the Sega Master System version looked better. But really, that's the only big problem. It's a nifty port with some charm to it if you can ignore the below-average graphics. Overall, Pac-Mania is a great addition to any Sega Genesis owner's collection, if you're a... Read the rest of this Review
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