Pac-Man Arrangement is a video game in the Pac-Man series released in 2005, developed by Tose and published by Namco The game debuted as one of the games featured on the Namco Museum Battle Collection for the PlayStation Portable. The game shares its title with an arcade game previously released in 1996, though the two are different games with the same objective of updating the classic Maze Game with modern hardware. Some later versions of the game are titled Pac-Man Remix to differentiate it from the 1996 game.
This version of Pac-Man Arrangement makes use of fully 3D graphics, but otherwise plays similarly to the maze games of old. While the 1996 version made the gameplay more challenging by adding new abilities for Pac-Man and the ghosts, this one focuses more on adding to the mazes themselves. Throughout the game, many of the mazes introduce a variety of stage-specific mechanics such as doors, conveyor belts, and elevators to make navigating the mazes more difficult.
The original release of the game featured two-player Co-op and Versus modes, but this option was omitted in the majority of the game's rereleases. An updated version titled Pac-Man Arrangement Plus was released one year later as part of the Namco Museum Vol. 2 compilation on the PSP, released exclusively in Japan and Korea. This version of the game upgrades the Vs. mode from the original game to allow for four players instead of just two, and re-themes certain rounds to add references to other Namco games.
This version of Pac-Man Arrangement provides examples of:
- Adapted Out: Rereleases of the game remove the two-player mode, which originally featured Ms. Pac-Man as the second player's character, most likely due to technical issues (the game was originally for PSP, a handheld). Curiously, however, she still appears during the credits.
- All Your Powers Combined: The final boss is a machine being driven by all four of the ghosts, who each take turns driving. Depending on the driver, the machine will mimic the attack patterns of the previous four boss battles, including Blinky's travelling between the maze's corners, Pinky following Pac-Man without adhering to the maze, Inky firing electric fields Pac-Man has to jump over, and Clyde charging in Pac-Man's direction.
- Asteroids Monster: Each end-of-world boss is a giant ghost made up of many smaller ghosts. When Pac-Man collects a Power Pellet, the giant ghost splits into many smaller ghosts, and Pac-Man must eat them all to defeat the boss. When the Power Pellets wear off, the remaining ghosts will merge back together, and the main boss ghost will get smaller the fewer ghosts are remaining.
- Big Boo's Haunt: The sixth and final world takes place in a haunted mansion lit by candles and decorated with spider webs. Rather fitting, since the main enemies are ghosts.
- Circling Birdies: Whenever Pac-Man charges past a ghost using a dash panel without having eaten a Power Pellet first, that ghost is temporarily dazed with stars spinning around their head.
- Company Cross References: In Plus version, half of the stages from each World are re-themed after various arcade games by Namco. Aside from Ms. Pac-Man for World 1, the rest are themed after Tank Battalion, Mappy, Toy Pop, Dig Dug II and The Tower of Druaga respectively, complete with new remixes of the music from those games.
- Construction Zone Calamity: World 4 takes place in a construction site. Pac-Man and the ghosts can pass through large concrete pipes that briefly hide them from the player's view, conveyor belts mess with Pac-Man's movement, steel beams act as blockades, and the end-of-world boss is a giant Clyde in a bulldozer.
- Doppelgänger Attack: Returning from the 1996 version is a power-up that creates a second Pac-Man that mirrors the main one's movements and can eat both dots and ghosts separately from the real one. In this game, the power up takes on the form of a scroll instead of a capsule. Pac-Man must make extensive use of this power-up in World 5's boss fight, as half of the maze is completely inaccessible to him.
- Eternal Engine: The stages of World 3 are located inside a building full of pipes, fans, and other machines. It is also where Pac-Man first encounters elevators, which he must use to access the different floors of two-level mazes.
- Every 10,000 Points: Extra lives are earned whenever the player earns 20,000 points, 40,000 points, and every 20,000 points after that. In the settings, there are options to change the requirements, with one option offering lives at 10,000, 30,000, and every 50,000 after that, or 40,000, 80,000, and every 10,000 after that.
- Flying Saucer: The World 2 boss has Pinky flying around in a flat disc-like spaceship. This allows her to fly over the walls and chase after Pac-Man independently from the maze layout.
- Green Hill Zone: World 2 is located in a grassy green garden with the walls made from flower beds.
- Metropolis Level: World 3 takes place inside a tall skyscraper. While Pac-Man only explores the various floors of this one building, the world map indicates that there are many skyscrapers throughout the city.
- Nostalgia Level: The first two stages of World 1 have an aesthetic that calls back to the original Pac-Man arcade game, with mazes made from blue barriers on a black background. Curiously, the original game's maze layout is not used for any of these stages. In Plus version the barriers are orange, in reference to the first maze from Ms. Pac-Man.
- Palmtree Panic: The first two stages of World 5 take place on a boardwalk surrounding a tropical island. The boardwalk is connected by many drawbridges that temporarily rise up, during which neither Pac-Man or the ghosts can cross them.
- Remilitarized Zone: First two levels in World 2 of Plus downplay the original's garden aesthetic in favour of a battlefield full of bricks based on Tank Battalion, with enemy tanks and the bird used to represent headquarters making appearances in the background, complete with a march-like theme. According to the map screen, those levels take place inside the giant brick building with broken roofing.
- Sequential Boss: World 5's boss battle has Pac-Man fight all four of the ghosts, one after another. Blinky and Pinky are fought individually, while Inky and Clyde fight simultaneously.
- Shock and Awe: During the boss fight with Inky in World 3, he can use his helmet to fire waves of electricity that travel across the ground and cover the entire stage. Pac-Man must use the jump power up to get over them.
- Toy Time:
- World 1's later stages takes place in mazes where the walls are built from large, colorful building blocks.
- First stages of World 3 in Plus are themed after Toy Pop, which itself took place in a castle full of presents and toys.
- Under the Sea: The later stages of World 5 take place beneath the waters of the ocean. Streams of bubbles rise up to the surface, and the maze walls are built from seaweed and coral.
- Warm-Up Boss: Blinky is the first and easiest boss in the game, as he travels between the four corners of his maze in a predictable pattern that he never deviates from, and there are four Power Pellets in the maze, giving Pac-Man plenty of chances to split him up.
- You Have Researched Breathing: Pac-Man cannot jump unless he collects the wing power-up first, even though he could jump normally in certain previous games like Pac-Mania.
