Pac-Mania is an Arcade Game in the Pac-Man series developed and released in arcades by Namco in 1987. It is the final Pac-Man game to be released in the 1980s, and was also the final Pac-Man game to be directed by the character's original creator, Toru Iwatani, before he temporarily returned to the series two decades later with Pac-Man Championship Edition.
Following more experimental games like Super Pac-Man and Pac & Pal, Pac-Mania's gameplay has more in common with the original Pac-Man, with the objective being to eat all the dots in each maze while avoiding being caught by the Ghost Gang. While the gameplay continues with traditions established in the earlier entries, the presentation has seen a major overhaul. The simplistic 8-bit graphics of the original games have been replaced with more detailed isometric 16-bit graphics, giving the game a pseudo-3D look. The mazes are more detailed, with the game's rounds being divided across four different layouts, featuring more elaborate theming than previous Pac-Man titles.
Some new features have been added to the gameplay. With the advent of a third dimension, Pac-Man now has the ability to jump and avoid ghosts. To counter this new advantage, the game adds more ghosts beyond the classic four, two of which will jump whenever Pac-Man does. Take too long in a maze, and Pac-Man's jump height will start decreasing until he can't jump at all.
Pac-Mania is one of the more frequently-ported Pac-Man arcade games of its time, with at least twelve different systems receiving ports prior to 1992. As of The Ninth Generation of Console Video Games, the game remains a staple of Namco's classic game library, receiving ports on most platforms that feature their games for sale.
Pac-Mania provides examples of:
- Breakable Power-Up: The Red Pellet increases the amount of points Pac-Man gains from eating ghosts, but once he loses a life, the effects go away.
- Determinator: Unlike the other ghosts, Sue does not have a scatter mode, and is always on Pac-Man's trail.
- Difficulty by Acceleration: All the characters in the game, including both Pac-Man and the ghosts, gradually get faster the more levels the player clears.
- Goroawase Number: The highest number of points the player can earn for eating a single ghost is 7650. In Goroawase, 765 can be pronounced as "na-mu-ko", a reference to Namco, the game's owner.
- The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: As is tradition for the series, Pac-Man must avoid the ghosts unless he eats a Power Pellet, which lets him eat them for a short while until it wears off. This is reflected in the intermission before Pac-Man's Park, which shows Pac-Man chasing two weakened ghosts off one side of the screen, only to return being chased by a massive wave of ghosts in the other direction.
- Isometric Projection: The environments in this game make use of oblique projection to give them a more three-dimensional look, and the character sprites are all designed to move around in this perspective.
- Mirror Match: Spunky can jump exactly as high as Pac-Man, making it impossible to jump over him. Funky can be avoided in this way since he jumps a tiny bit lower.
- No Ending: Depending on the settings of the DIP switch. One option causes the game to loop back to Block Town at a higher difficulty after clearing Jungly Steps instead of ending, turning the game into an Endless Game.
- Nostalgia Level: The second world is Pac-Man's Park. The levels in this world have the same maze layout as the maze from the original Pac-Man, and the music makes use of the melody from the game's Coffee Break intermission sequences.
- Screen Crunch:
- The original arcade version uses a TATE (vertical widescreen) display, but the isometric mazes would be more well suited to a 4:3 display, which can make detecting ghosts to the left or right difficult.
- The Atari ST version of the game has an entire half of the screen taken up by the HUD.
- Due to the screen resolution of the Game Boy Advance, the version of the game featured in Pac-Man Collection has the character sprites take up a large amount of the screen, and not even a fourth of the maze can fit on the screen.
- Series Continuity Error: The bezel of the arcade machine describes Clyde (the orange ghost) as the leader, and Blinky (the red ghost) as the slow, absent minded one. This is the reverse of their personalities from the original Pac-Man, though it is more in-line with how they are depicted in the Hanna-Barbera animated series. However, within the game itself, they have their respective personalities from the older games, with the red ghost being the one that chases Pac-Man most aggressively. This would not be the last Pac-Man game to get Blinky and Clyde mixed up.
- Shifting Sand Land: The third world is Sandbox Land, which seems to be made from glasslike pyramids creating walls around a series of sandy paths.
- Toy Time: The first world is Block Town, where the mazes are built from giant colorful interlocking building blocks.
- Timed Power-Up: In addition to the typical Power Pellets, the Green Pellet will temporarily increase Pac-Man's speed, but the effect disappears after a certain amount of time.
- Turns Red: Once Pac-Man has eaten a certain number of Pac-Dots, the red ghost (named either Blinky or Clyde, depending on the source) will start moving faster as it pursues him. This change is indicated when his eyes turn angry.
- Unnaturally Looping Location: Pac-Man's Park and Sandbox Land have tunnels on the side that loop to the opposite side of the maze. Since the camera follows Pac-Man in this game, however, he enters a seemingly identical maze instead of teleporting to the other side of the screen.
