Pac-Man Museum+

Genre: Compilation / Arcade

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local), Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Pac-Man Museum+ is a Compilation released on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2022. This is a package containing 14 Pac-Man games from throughout the years, spanning across various genres, but frequently being variations on the original Arcade-style maze game. I should note that this is absolutely nowhere close to a comprehensive collection of Pac-Man games (it’s even missing the extremely influential Ms. Pac-Man, though this may be due to legal issues).

Here is what I thought of each of the games in this collection:

Game	Genre	# of Players	Grade
Pac & Pal	Arcade	1	C-
tl;dr It’s like Pac-Man, but worse! Much as with Super Pac-Man, this game thinks adding keys and locked doors to Pac-Man will make it better instead of just more tedious. It’s wrong.
Pac in Time	Platformer	1-2 Alternating (Local)	C+
tl;dr This is an interesting interpretation of the Pac-Man formula as a Platformer, but the bizarre physics don’t work very well.
Pac-Attack	Falling Block Puzzle	1-2 Competitive (Local)	C+
tl;dr This is a pretty decent Falling-Block Puzzle, though the controls can feel a tad stiff, and the need to use Pac-Man to clear ghosts means your ability to clear blocks is often conditional on waiting to get Pac-Man.
Pac-Land	Platformer	1	D
tl;dr Pac-Land is an absolutely abysmal Platformer whose most lasting legacy is being the basis for one of the worst stages in the Super Smash Bros. series. The only reason you would play this game more than once is because you have to play it twice in this Compilation to unlock Pac & Pal.
Pac-Man	Arcade	1-2 Alternating (Local)	C+
tl;dr Pac-Man is a classic Arcade maze game, and it still plays great. However, unlike Ms. Pac-Man, you’re stuck with just the one opening level, so the game gets repetitive pretty quickly.
Pac-Man 256	Arcade / Roguelike	1-4 Competitive (Local)	A
tl;dr This is a fantastic, clever take on Pac-Man that re-imagines the game as an endless score attack with Roguelike elements, with the encroaching corruption eating the screen from the bottom just as big a threat as the ghosts patrolling the endless maze. This game has an outstanding “just one more run…” quality that you always look for in a great Roguelike, and there’s even an excellent multiplayer mode here too.
Pac-Man Arrangement	Arcade	1	C+
tl;dr Pac-Man Arrangement is a solid take on the Pac-Man formula that adds some fun stage-based twists to the formula to keep things interesting. Unfortunately, the presentation is horrendous, featuring distracting floating pellets and one of the worst soundtracks Pac-Man has ever had. This version also lacks the multiplayer mode of the original game.
Pac-Man: Battle Royale	Arcade	1-4 Competitive (Local)	B-
tl;dr This fun competitive take on Pac-Man is a blast to play with friends… at least in short bursts. Unfortunately, the lack of any sort of variety or any significant single-player mode means this isn’t a game that’s likely to entertain you for long.
Pac-Man: Championship Edition	Arcade	1	A
tl;dr This neon-infused, pulsating reimagining of Pac-Man as a fast-paced, intense, score-focused race against the clock is absolutely inspired. It’s just a shame there’s no multiplayer mode here, unless you count leaderboards.
Pac-Mania	Arcade	1	C+
tl;dr Pac-Mania takes the standard Pac-Man formula and plugs it into an isometric pseudo-3D viewpoint, with much more slow-paced gameplay, but a little nuance added due to the ability to jump. This game loses points due to the player’s inability to see the entire screen at once, but gains some back due to the stages actually changing, something the Pac-Man series seems to have had a difficult time doing for some reason.
Pac-Moto	Arcade	1-4 Competitive (Local)	C+
tl;dr You may expect a game called ‘Pac-Moto” to involve cars in some way, but in reality this is an arena-based game where players bash into enemies to try to push them off the edge. Not bad, but nothing extraordinary either.
Pac’n Roll Remix	Arcade / Platformer	1	C+
tl;dr A remaster of a remake of a game dating back to the Nintendo DS, this version features neither the DS version’s touchscreen controls nor the Wii version’s motion controls, and as a result, the game’s extremely fast pace becomes unwieldy. Add to this a camera that actively fights the player, and what could have been a great game becomes something that’s alternately good and frustrating. Worth playing, but be prepared to deal with that frustration.
Super Pac-Man	Arcade	1-2 Alternating (Local)	C-
tl;dr Super Pac-Man is just… Pac-Man with more steps. There are now two types of power pellets, and doors you need to unlock with keys, and yet the game still repeats the same level over and over again. In short, this is a step down from Pac-Man.

In short, you have a lot of middling, mediocre games that haven’t aged especially well, a few truly terrible games, and three major stand-outs: Pac-Man: Battle Royale, Pac-Man 256, and Pac-Man: Championship Edition. That’s a pretty miserable “wheat to chaff” ratio, but one could easily argue that the games here that are good are so good, that you could easily view this as a Compilation of just those three games with everything else being a nice bonus.

I should note that some of the games in this package are also playable in other Compilations on Nintendo Switch. Pac-Man is also in Namco Museum, Namco Museum Arcade Pac, and Namco Museum Archives Vol. 1, and Pac-Land is in Namco Museum Archives Vol. 2. However, all of the other games in this Compilation are only playable on Nintendo Switch in this Compilation.

The games in this package are included in a framing device that includes a little Virtual Arcade that you can decorate and arrange to your liking, with players earning credits from playing the games that they can put towards buying more decor for this arcade. While this is nice in theory, in practice this makes it a bit more tedious to pick the specific game you want, and trying to shuffle through leaderboards to see your placement in the different games is a lot more time-consuming than it needed to be. What’s more, you can’t even place all of the games in the arcade – games that were only released on consoles are delegated to a menu within a “Free Game Cabinet”, of which you can only place two, and these games don’t independently remember which game you last selected on each.

There’s also the other frustration here – the need to repeatedly play some of the games in this Compilation to unlock others. Pac-Land is already a miserable experience, but it becomes even worse when you’re forced to trudge through it in two complete play-throughs to unlock Pac & Pal. Take my advice – quickly get this stupid requirement out of the way by starting up the game and intentionally dying multiple times.

The one remaining question here is one of value. At $20, this would be a spectacular price for 14 games if most of them were great… but most of them are not great – the average game in this Compilation is decent but definitely not great. However, as I noted before, I would still argue that this price is a steal for this collection, if only to be able to play Pac-Man: Battle Royale, Pac-Man 256, and Pac-Man: Championship Edition on Nintendo Switch. It’s frustrating that this has to come with a terrible framing device that bogs everything down, but this seems a small price to pay to play the best games in this package.

tl;dr – Pac-Man Museum+ is a Compilation of 14 games from throughout the Pac-Man franchise. This is an extremely uneven collection stuffed full of middling games, missing extremely important and historic games like Ms. Pac-Man, and including a few real stinkers like Pac-Land. This game also includes a simulated arcade as a framing device that unfortunately bogs everything down and forces players to trudge through its bad games to unlock everything. However, despite all of these issues, $20 for a package that includes Pac-Man: Battle Royale, Pac-Man 256, and Pac-Man: Championship Edition is an absolute steal, and you can just view all that other stuff as extra. If only for these three games, this is a must-have package.

Grade: B+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2022 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Compilation / Collection, Best Value ($20)

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