YMMV / Pac-Man 99

• Awesome Music: For only having a few original songs, the game boasts a stellar soundtrack. The Top 10 theme in particular is bound to get your blood pumping immediately.
• Contested Sequel: Compared to the previous Arika battle royales. PAC-MAN 99 is praised for its highly-addictive core gameplay, shorter match times, and being more accessible skill-wise, but is also criticized for its relatively high luck factor and expensive Downloadable Content, with the prized Private Match feature being locked behind DLC that is only available as a bundle with the offline modes and costs at minimum $15 USD.
• Demonic Spiders: Red Jammer Pac-Man. Anyone who has made it to the Top 50 has felt the wrath of these persistent demons; they only exist to make the board even more chaotic than it already is since only Fruit can truly kill them, and freezing a Red Jammer in the wrong place at the wrong time can make the difference between victory and defeat. It got even worse in a later update where they start appearing after 75 players are left.
• Fandom Rivalry: Immediately developed one with Super Mario Bros., as 99 was announced a week after Super Mario 3D All-Stars and Super Mario Bros. 35 were removed from the Nintendo eShop and was accused of replacing the latter due to both being Battle Royale Games made by Arika that come free with Nintendo Switch Online.
• Goddamned Bats: "Jammer Pac-Men" aren't so harmful early on in the game as they only slow you down for a split second, but prove to be a huge nuisance when several of them start appearing later on, slowing you down significantly. Then there are the Red Jammer Pac-Men...
• Memetic Mutation: The irony of PAC-MAN 99 being announced exactly a week after Super Mario Bros. 35 was shut down was not lost on fans, with many joking that Pac-Man killed Mario to become Nintendo's new mascot. Ironically, it would be met with a similar fate, with F-Zero 99 announced shortly before its own shutdown.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Like the sound from its puzzle-based cousin, the robotic "K.O.!" is an absolute joy to hear.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Or, in this case, unexpected game/series, regarding Namco properties. The custom DLC skins based on Dig Dug and Galaga aren't that surprising since they often get re-releases. Others, like Sky Kid, Mappy, New Rally-X, The Tower of Druaga, Dragon Buster, Rolling Thunder, The Legend of Valkyrie and Dragon Spirit, are more of a pleasant surprise, but most are at least cult classics. But then there's ones that represent games that are incredibly obscure worldwide, like Cosmo Gang The Video, Toy Pop, Genpei Tōma Den, and Yokai Dochuki.
  • A minor example for the first two skins released after the game's launch. One is for the sequel to Mappy, Hopping Mappy, while the other is for the Super-Deformed Splatterhouse Wanpaku Graffiti. Doubly so because the original Splatterhouse does not yet have a skin.
  • Other post-launch skin is based on Tank Battalion, a surprise for the reasons opposite to Hopping Mappy and Wanpaku Graffiti. It has a better known sequel/port, Battle City, that could have been more obvious addition.
  • Perhaps one of the most obscure additions from the lot of free DLC was The Tower of Babel, a game that didn't see any form of official release in the west until its appearance on the Nintendo Switch Online service in 2023 (under the name Mystery Tower), and is one of Namco's more underutilized properties overall.

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