Pac-Man 99

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1-99 Competitive (Online)

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Review:

(Note: This game is no longer available)

Pac-Man 99, released in 2021, is a title that takes the Arcade classic Pac-Man and gives it the “Battle Royale” online competitive treatment, much in the same way as Tetris 99 and Super Mario Bros. 35 before it did. The online-only 99-player competitive version of the game is free-to-play for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers, but players can also opt to purchase a $15 “Mode Unlock” that unlocks local single-player play against bots and password matches against specific players. Also available are 20 different cosmetic-only skins for $2, and a $30 Deluxe Pack containing all of the above.

This game is clearly a descendant of the Pac-Man Championship Edition series of Pac-Man spin-off games, and it shows in the game’s presentation, which includes slick, modern visuals and a catchy electronica-inspired soundtrack with some nice remixes of the classic Pac-Man theme – in particular, I really like the Main Theme and Loss theme. Along with this, there are also elements that will look very familiar to players of Tetris 99 and Super Mario 35, such as the way your screen is displayed surrounded by miniature versions of opponents’ screens. Overall, it’s a polished presentation that works very well, even if it’s not pushing any boundaries.

Of course, visuals aren’t the only thing this game gets from the Championship Edition line of games. This game’s mechanics draw from that series too. Players find themselves moving in a single-screen maze filled with the traditional ghosts, dots, fruit, and power pellets, of course. As in the Championship Edition games, snagging enough dots causes fruit to appear, and getting fruit replenishes the dots and power pellets. There are also more subtle mechanics from those games, like “sparking” around corners. And as in the later games in the series, players running across smaller, stationary ghosts toss them to the back of one of the wandering ghosts to create a “train” that players can later gobble up in a large combo.

Where Pac-Man 99 shakes things up is that eating ghosts now sends “Jammer Pac-Man” enemies to opponents’ screens. These enemies slow down players who run into them, making them easier targets for ghosts. Later into a match, these Jammer Pac-Man enemies will turn red, making them just as dangerous as ghosts (and unaffected by power-pellets, resulting in them being even deadlier).

To control how they confront enemies, players are given two sets of options that they can freely swap between using the face buttons and right stick. The face buttons swap between Standard, Stronger, Speed, and Train. And the control stick swaps between Random, Hunter, Knockout, and Counter. In theory, this gives the player a lot of options at any given moment.

Unfortunately, what each of these options actually does isn’t exactly made clear by the game, and left to the player to deduce. Those familiar with Tetris 99 will no doubt gather that Knockout likely focuses attacks on struggling opponents, Counter likely sends attacks to those attacking you, and Random leaves attacks unfocused but also makes it less likely you’ll be targeted. And Speed is fairly easy to figure out – it makes you faster. However, all of the other options are a bit harder to figure out. What’s the advantage of Standard over Speed? What does “Stronger” make stronger? I feel like much of the game’s strategy is likely hidden behind these sorts of questions, and since you’ll likely be too busy looking at your own screen to analyze how you affect opponents, it’ll be tough to see just how your actions affect those opponents.

However, it’s not just the nebulous nature of the game that makes for frustration. Despite Pac-man being a simple game, the controls here are a bit unwieldy. I found the game misinterpreting my commands more often than I’d like and sending me down the wrong path, often to my doom, numerous times. This is not an issue I had frequently in other Pac-Man games. What’s more, the way your options are displayed is unnecessarily confusing. Despite that the face buttons are farther to the right on the controller than the right analog stick, here the face button options are displayed on the left and analog stick options on the left, which is really disorienting.

If your controls don’t mess you up, you may well end up within the final 15-20 or so players when your screen starts filling up with enough red jammer Pac-Men that navigation becomes burdensome, and then outright impossible. Given that the game doesn’t really make it clear how to deal with these things, nor how to avoid getting them in the first place, it can really feel like even playing at your best leads to losing through no fault of your own. I’m sure there’s something I could have done better to avoid this, but the game doesn’t make it clear exactly what that is.

And where both Tetris 99 and Super Mario Bros. 35 gave players a consolation prize in the form of unlockable skins or icons earned through play, here as far as I can tell the only content that isn’t unlocked from the start is the stuff you have to pay to unlock, which removes the element of working toward a goal that those other games gave players even when they were losing. Without it, not only is the game less enjoyable, but it also feels somewhat more shallow, like you’ve already seen all the game has to offer within the first ten or twenty minutes of playing it.

In the end, Pac-Man 99 is a game with good core gameplay, a great concept, and a fantastic presentation… that is nevertheless frustrating to play. Much like Tetris 99, you will likely lose a lot, but while Tetris 99 seems unbalanced due to matching you with opponents who vastly outclass you, Pac-Man 99 seems unbalanced due to game mechanics that are obscured from the player or simply out of your control, and the lack of content to unlock through gameplay makes constantly losing even less palatable than in Tetris 99.

This is still a fun game in short busts, but it’s one you’ll play for a bit and then get frustrated with. To put it simply, this isn’t quite the epic multiplayer Pac-Man you may have been hoping for. Heck, I’d even go as far as to argue it’s not even the best multiplayer Pac-Man on the Nintendo Switch – both Pac-Man Vs. (included in Namco Museum) and Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 Plus are far superior. However, if you already have Nintendo Switch Online, you might as well give the game a try – it will cost you nothing to play, after all.

tl;dr – Pac-Man 99 is a version of Pac-Man that re-imagines the Arcade classic as a battle royale-style game much in the same way that Tetris 99 and Super Mario Bros. 35 did, borrowing elements from the Pac-Man Championship Edition series as well as introducing a few of its own. Unfortunately, the controls feel a bit loose, and the mechanics are obscured from the player. You will die a lot in this game and not even know what you could have done differently, which is pretty frustrating. Still, if you subscribe to Nintendo Switch Online, the core online competitive mode here is free, so you may as well give it a try – it does have its fun moments, in-between the frustration.

Grade: C+

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