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Let’s break down Pac-Man 99, the latest retro-fighting royale game on Nintendo Switch.
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Standard Pac-Man here. Switches. Find power pellets. Eat ghosts.
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When you eat a ghost, gray phantom ghosts explode and fly to the opponents’ fields.
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This is known as the “sorry” Pac-Men, and it becomes slow-moving speed traps. You have to go through one and deal with the slowdown before it disappears.
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It seems like a gang of jammers is slowing down this Pac-Man too much to avoid death.
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Sleeping ghosts, on the other hand, can be eaten up …
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… and when that happens, they start falling behind bigger ghosts. This creates more dangers in your field …
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… but it can also result in a serious haunted payday if you end up hitting a powerhouse.
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Upward options on the left. ‘Target your attack’ choices on the right.
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Beat the other 98 players, and you become the Pac-One!
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Three modes have a purchase of $ 15. It does not look very attractive.
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But if you need it another way to tackle scoring challenges in Pac-Man, here you go.
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Speedrunners, get ready.
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Bandai Namco also likes to charge you $ 2 per doll for field-changing skins based on classic arcade series.
First Tetris, dan Super Mario, and now Pac-Man: Nintendo Switch continues the series of “retro battle royale” video games this week by asking a remarkably strange question. What would Pac-Man be as if 99 people would play the match at a time, and only one grain muncher emerged victorious?
The new game, creatively titled Pac-Man 99, arrives on Wednesday, March 7, as a free download for paying subscribers on the Nintendo Switch Online service. Its agreement with 2019s Tetris 99 and 2020s Super Mario 35 is no coincidence, as it’s designed with the same “NintendoWare Bezel Engine” used in those other games – and the framework seems to work in a clever way with simultaneous sessions of competitive juggling Pac-Man.
Jammers, ghost trains and boosts
As seen in the game’s surprise unveiled Tuesday night, Pac-Man 99standard online mode looks like the oldest version of Pac-Man, in terms of ghost chasing and yellow dots on the series’ earliest black-and-blue maze. As Tetris 99 for this, Pac-Man 99 play much like the traditional source material, only with fields of online players interfering with each other’s progress. You send attacks to other players’ fields (visible on the edges of the screen as smaller windows) by eating power pellets and then devouring vulnerable ghosts. They do the same with you.
The spin of this game is a new idea for the series. Your attacks send waves of ‘sorry Pac-Men’ to opponents’ fields (visible on the edges of the screen as smaller windows), but it does not cause direct damage caused. Instead, these transparent Pac shadows scatter the mazes of the game as speed bumps, and players must maneuver Pac-Man through their quicksand buttons to make them disappear. One or two pitfalls are tolerable; six or more really looks like headaches, especially when Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde get you stuck in a corner.
So, success in Pac-Man 99 will depend in part on planning your maze move in a way that allows you to safely clean up storers and keep your speed high. To send attacks to other players, ‘ghost trains’ must be created that are removed from the lights Pac-Man Championship Edition series. Set up this screen-filled series of ghosts without accidentally bumping into them, then eat a power pellet so you can devour dozens of ghosts in neatly arranged rows.
Players also get access to three selectable “boost” modes, called “strength”, “speed” and “train”, and although it seems obvious, we still have to see when and how they get into the game or whether it’s the basic act of make ghost escape more enjoyable or not.
Ninten-do what Stadia does not quite do
Oddly enough, it is not the only one online Pac-Man concept to launch over the past year. Pac-Man Mega Tunnel Battle debuted on Google Stadiums in October 2020, but the 64-player survey revolves around much larger chunks of points where players can bump into each other. In my testing experience, Mega Tunnel Battle can be laughable and jumpy if the connections of other online players deteriorate for whatever reason. Since Pac-Man 99 keeping each player in his own isolated playing field, it can circumvent such problems neatly.
I have praised before Tetris 99 as an ingenious, challenging approach to the famous Tetris formula. Although we were not necessarily that hot Super Mario 35a similar twist the following year, it was a fun lion’s share – although it was temporary, as Nintendo closed the same game’s servers on March 31, the same day it delisted Super Mario 3D All-Stars. (We hardly knew you, Mario.) Pac-Man 99 seems to be closer to the Tetris 99 side of things, which bodes well for the free-with-subscription game starting later today.
Pac-Man 99 trailer.
List by Nintendo / Bandai Namco