I'm talking Pac & Pal.
It's quite hard to believe this is a Pac-Man game.
Experimenting on franchises is not an unexpected thing. Sometimes game developers want to explore the limits of how far a game franchise could go, like Nintendo's Super Mario RPG where a platform based character embarks on his well received RPG adventure. Namco is not a stranger on this formula as we have examples: Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere, Idolmaster Xenoglossia and Xenosaga Freaks. Those were well accepted by their respective fandoms, except for one title and that's Pac & Pal.
What makes Pac & Pal different from the rest, including Super Pac-Man is how the game takes the formula of Pac-Man away from its traditional roots of eating Pac-Dots (Power Pills for the Atari-era fans) and replaces it with a simplistic puzzle element: Flipping cards to open gates where the indicated item is confined. This also apply to the special objects which now replace the "Power" Pac-Dots with Rally-X cars and Galboss (Galaxian). These power ups also had the mechanics changed; Rather than making the ghosts vulnerable so Pac-Man can eat them, you can shoot smoke or ripples to freeze the ghosts and pass through them, 'cos if you touch them you'll die even with the power up activated.
The main feature of the game is the "Pal" called Mil. For a partner, Mil is an imbecile who rather than picking the item and chase you until you get it, it takes it away and you have to catch her before she takes it to the ghost den and the item is forever lost. With a partner acting like that, anyone will think Mil is more of a "Pal" for the ghosts rather than Pac-Man's. Even retro gaming critics consider her one of the worst characters and Pac & Pal the worst of the series, and believe it or not, getting all the items before Mil takes them away is the objective for the "Perfect" bonus.
Remember the funny cutscenes of the games?, Those were removed with a bonus stage where the objective is to flip cards without revealing the one where the ghost is located. Revealing Mil will duplicate your score x2 and if the ghost card is flipped as the last one you'll get the full bonus.
The game was released a lot of times in Pac-Man compilations, and recently on the Pac-Man Museum+, it was also released on the Arcade Archives series. Ironically, the Arcade Archives port lacks the flaw that comes with the compilations: Input lags, that's the only (and most important) point in favor, along with its respective trophies. Also, the Arcade Archives version only has the original Japanese version, omitting the extremely rare Pac-Man and Chomp-Chomp version which replaced Mil with Chomp-Chomp, the dog from the Hanna-Barbera's Pac-Man cartoon because that would mean paying royalties to Warner Bros. Discovery/NetherRealm Studios (Midway) for licensing reasons. Curiosuly, Namco comissioned this palette swap but it was later canceled when they terminated their partnership with Midway due to the unlicensed use of the character (Jr. Pac-Man, Professor Pac-Man, Baby Pac-Man being those unlicensed games).
Audiovisually, it feels dull as we only have one maze with different card layouts throughout the whole 5-10 levels we've play with this game, which is a step back from what Namco learned on Super Pac-Man and one single repetitive song that plays forever. In fact this game has two themes: Game start, stage theme, bonus level, Game Over and name entry.
PAC & FUN-FACTS
- Pac & Pal is the fourth Pac-Man game released in the Arcade Archives series.
- First Pac-Man game which features music on the background.
- It also the second Pac-Man game that includes a Name Entry screen.
I know Lea, you're expecting something a little better.
(Hope we can see NebulasRay soon...)
A failed experiment of stretching the limits, but it's still a curious piece of Pac-History that only the super Pac-Fans will be happy to get despite the negative points and how the game drifts away from its traditional source.
The "Lea Scale" is on "Normal" because the trophies and fixed emulation issues saved Pac & Pal from being called trash.