Pacman Versus

Question: What do you get when you mix legendary game god, Shigeru Miyamoto, and legendary gaming icon/person/pizza/thing, Pacman?

Answer: An ingenious new Pacman idea. That's what.

Pacman Versus was released for the Gamecube a few years ago. To play it properly, you needed at least one more friend (ideally 3), and a Gameboy to Gamecube link cable. For that reason I never played it back then.

Fast forward to today and Namco have re-released the game, this time as part of their Namco Museum collection, for the Nintendo DS. You can play Pacman Vs using the DS's WiFi mode, against 3 other players (unfortunately not online, that would have been awesome).

So what's the big deal? Pacman Vs. effectively substitutes the ghosts with human players. It's as simple as that. What's ingenious about it is the way that it's done. At the start of each game, a score limit is set for the winner to reach. A player is chosen at random to play Pacman, and the others become ghosts.

Pacman plays the game exactly like it's single player: he sees the whole maze, has to try and eat all the pellets, and can use the power pellets to chase and gobble up ghosts. He can also eat some fruit now and then for a bonus.

The ghosts however play a bit differently: they still have to catch pacman, but instead of seeing the whole maze, all they see is a very limited 3D overhead view of the maze. The clever bit is that pacman leaves a short shining trail behind him as he runs along, which gives the ghosts a good hint as to where he's been but not where he's gone. If a ghost eats the fruit instead of pacman, their camera zooms out a bit giving them an advantage towards hunting the yellow pizza down.

Even more clever is the scoring system: Pacman automatically gets 1600 points as a bonus, and every ghost he eats gives him 200 points which are taken away from that player's score. Whoever catches Pacman then gets to play him the next round, and the 1600 points is taken off the old Pacman, and given to the new one.
This makes the game a relentless chase and one that forces the ghosts to try and co-op, but also to be selfish and try to get Pacman themselves. Extremely clever stuff.

The game works really well on the NDS, using both screen to great effect. Me and Kelly have been playing it recently and it really is fast-paced fun. Shame it doesn't have online WiFi against strangers, like the excellent Tetris DS. That would have been the most addictive thing since, well, Tetris DS :)