Virtually Overlooked: Pac-Land
by JC Fletcher 
{ Jul 19th 2007 at 6:15PM }
Welcome to our weekly feature, Virtually Overlooked, wherein we talk about games that aren't on the Virtual Console yet, but should be. Call it a retro-speculative.Pac-Land may not be terribly obscure, but it is an interesting look at how Namco treated its flagship franchise in 1984. Most companies would play it safe with a hit as massive as Pac-Man, but not Namco. They branched out in increasingly odd directions. Pac-Land is still exceptionally odd today, but it was even stranger when it was originally released, and bizarrely anachronistic when it was ported to the PC Engine in 1989.
It will be eventually. It was a fairly large release for the Turbografx-16, and was a major entry in one of the most important game franchises ever. It'll get there. Namco actually put Splatterhouse on the Virtual Console, so anything is possible!
Why we think it should be on the Virtual Console:
Bally/Midway, the US distributors of Pac-Man, made a couple of weird sequels and spinoffs to Namco's original Pac-Man. Baby Pac-Man was a half-pinball, half-video game chimera. Professor Pac-Man was a quiz game. Namco went off on other weird tangents, like Pac & Pal, featuring a helper ghost, and Super Pac-Man, in which Pac-Man eats keys to unlock gates in a maze. One of their weirdest ideas was to put Pac-Man into a nascent genre called the platform game, in which a character moves through a scrolling level, jumping on platforms and collecting items while avoiding enemies. And so Pac-Man, one of the most abstract games ever, lead to Pac-Land, which put gameplay elements of the original game into a cartoon-realistic world and made characters of the yellow shapes. In the game, Pac-Man agrees to walk some fairies home, through a ghost-filled town in which he lives for some reason. He says goodbye to Ms. Pac-Man and Baby Pac-Man, sticks a fairy under his adventurin' hat and sets off.
Pac-Land differs from most platformers in a couple of important areas. First, the control scheme-- Pac-Land uses, by default, the I and II buttons to run and the d-pad to jump. In a genre that depends so heavily on precise controls, this control scheme is jarring. It's strange that anyone ever thought that using action buttons for movement and directional buttons for action made any sense. But, of course, these are the same people who designed ghost enemies that attack you by throwing their children out of airplanes.
Second, unlike most platformers, Pac-Man's method of dealing with enemies is not to stomp on them or attack them. Alone, he is completely unequipped to dispatch any of the numerous ghosts who occupy the levels, flying around in airplanes or driving in jaunty automobiles. In true Pac-Man fashion, he can pick up Power Pellets and eat ghosts, but most of the game is spent avoiding ghosts.
At the end of every "trip" (analogous to a "World" in Super Mario Bros.), Pac-Man returns the fairy to her home, and is rewarded with boots that let him jump infinitely. You then use these to fly back over the previous levels to your home, only to embark on another trip the next day. Speeding through the game on bouncy boots is the best part! And, of course, it's good to see Pac-Man getting some use out of those feet that he has all of a sudden.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
danny. @ Jul 19th 2007 6:26PM
With all that time between releases, did they improve on the arcade version? I dumped plenty into it at Max & Erma's as a kid. The controls, as I recall, were terrible.
Patrick Fisher @ Jul 19th 2007 6:39PM
This sounds like the predecessor of Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures for the SNES. Possibly the best moments in that game would be when Pac-Man got completely furious and would stomp around.
anghus @ Jul 19th 2007 7:17PM
the games i want most on VC
Ghouls and Ghosts - Genesis
Rambo III - Genesis
Gross Greg @ Jul 19th 2007 7:40PM
OMG this reminds me of that McDonald's Nintendo Game - M.C. Kids. Check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.C._Kids
hvnlysoldr @ Jul 19th 2007 7:59PM
Watch the Angry Video Game (formerly just Nintendo) Nerd rip a new one out of McKids.
http://screwattack.com/Flash%20HTML/ANN/MC/mckidsintro.html
Xt @ Jul 19th 2007 9:32PM
One of my favorite Lynx games. Never thought it was strange, just fun.
Lauren @ Jul 19th 2007 10:32PM
My GF would love to get hold of this game, one of her favourites. One things for sure if it makes a VC appearance then I'll be buying....whether I like it or not ;-)
retodd @ Jul 19th 2007 10:58PM
I remember seeing this in the arcade and being blown away by the graphics. I remember it being all-right but it can't hold a candle to Ikari Warriors.
Rob @ Jul 20th 2007 2:34AM
In response to an above comment, I've played both games and this game really isn't very much like McKids. McKids however, in my opinion is a much better game.
Steve @ Jul 20th 2007 12:45PM
>> Pac-Land uses, by default, the I and II buttons to run
>> and the d-pad to jump. In a genre that depends so
>> heavily on precise controls, this control scheme is
>> jarring. It's strange that anyone ever thought that
>> using action buttons for movement and directional
>> buttons for action made any sense.
Pressing up to jump exists in fighting games too, and it's just as unintuitive there as it is here. That's why I dislike fighting games and could never get into the Super Smash Bros games. It's especially unintuitive in SSB because you'll control Mario, DK, Samus, or some other character you've played over the course of 20 years but now, suddenly, to jump you have to press up. WTF?
BTW, I wouldn't call platform games nascent at the time. I heard that Pac-Land was the very first, not one of the first, true platform games. Because of this I can give it a pass on the up button fiasco, but by the time it was ported to the TGX this flaw should have been fixed.
Ben @ Jul 20th 2007 3:35PM
why the splatterhouse hate? One of the games I loved as a kid (at the arcade) and had to get as soon as it came out on the VC. Sure its not the arcade version but its not that bad.
JC Fletcher @ Jul 20th 2007 3:34PM
No hate, it just seems like an unlikely choice for the VC. Because of the grossness and violence and such.
Mr Khan @ Jul 20th 2007 3:48PM
@ Steve
you do know that there has always been a jump button in the smash bros games (4 in the original and 2 in Melee), just for those who had the same complaints.
But i'm there with you, i never played Melee's "Single Button" Mode because it required you to forgo the jump buttons and use the stick to jump