PAC-MAN 256 - Endless Maze 2.1.1

I started loathing this word lately: "vibrant." And It's only because it has been associated with the moronic idea that putting wildly different cultures into a single living space somehow makes a cohesive society. But frankly, that's the first word that came to my mind when I started playing PAC-MAN 256. Compared to the original, the colors here are off the scale. The maze layout changes hue from time to time, the ghosts come in more colors, there are several types of fruit, and there's this constant glitchy electronic ASCII fog that's always on your tail, eating up the world!

Well, we finally got the PAC-MAN endless run game. That's essentially it. The basic mechanics are still there though. We have Power Pellets that turn ghosts into edible morsels, score bumping fruit, and even teleporting gateways. You know, just like the ones some flat-earthers think exist in the Pacific Ocean. And I'm talking about the smarter bunch. The others still think we live on a dish. In any case, the main difference is that you're playing one endless stage while running from the infamous memory error that plagued level 256 in the original release.

However, things have changed a bit since then. Besides the main gameplay twist, PAC-MAN can now get powerups. From the time you first run PAC-MAN 256, a countdown timer will continuously be churning out special abilities, of which you can use only three at any time. These are fairly powerful. For example, the first one is a laser that kills off all ghosts that find themselves in front of PAC-MAN for a limited time. You can only make use of one powerup at a time, and you can only use what you pick-up during play.

Ghosts also work a bit differently. Some charge when they spot you, some are passive until you get close, some are blind, and some play train and act like a moving wall, well until you get a power pellet or frying laser that is.

Points are gained quickly. You're no longer required to eat up all the Pac-Dots, but each contributes one point to your final scoring, while fruit and gobbled up ghosts bump it up considerably. Also if you manage to eat a streak of 256 Pac-Dots, you'll add a big bonus to your score. In short, as long as you survive, you will keep gaining points, and since surviving is much easier than in the standard game, scores also get incomparably higher.

One last aspect I should mention is that there are eleven additional unlockable themes. You can try each one once before purchasing (with in-game currency or real dough). But you can also randomly experience them from the start. Thank you BANDAI NAMCO!

Final Thoughts

I think BANDAI NAMCO has done a great job with this mobile version of PAC-MAN. The difficulty has been lowered so that you can play at your leisure, say in the subway cart without twitching awkwardly in front of others. Also, the powerups and themes bring a lot of variety to this old formula. Recommended to any PAC-MAN fan as well as any newcomer.