GAME CLEAR No. 87 -- Pac-Man 256

Pac-Man 256 (2015, Multiplatform)

Developer: Hipster Whale, 3 Sprockets, Bandai Namco Studios
Publisher: Bandai Namco
Clear Platform: Xbox One, Xbox Series X
Clear Date: 3/20/22

Back-to-back Pac.

This is a game I bought around launch but have only just now gotten around to beating. And this is one of those kinds of games where you sort of have to decide what it even means to beat it. It’s an endless runner originally designed for mobile devices, so it wasn’t really designed to be beaten. Nevertheless, there are two criteria I met that I chose for me to call it beaten: I unlocked and maxed out every power-up, and I unlocked every achievement.

What that really means is I actually 100% complete the game. For games without a clear end state, I have a hard time formulating my own “I’m done with this” state, so I leave the mental requirement for myself at “do everything.” That’s why I’ve never “beaten” a Picross game, for example, by my own standards. In this case, as aforementioned, the goalpost was to unlock every weapon in the game and maximize their power. These are unlocked by eating progressively more dots, and they’re upgraded with in-game coins that are awarded for completing in-game missions (e.g. eat X ghosts, kill X ghosts with Y power-up, etc.). This is a hell of a grind due to the game’s mobile platform design philosophy.

But I found this game compelling enough to stick it out, and that’s because Pac-Man in an endless, procedurally generated maze just works exactly like it sounds like it should. The game’s name is a reference to the original game, in which an integer overflow error causes level 256 to load improperly, turning the right side of the screen into a jumbled mess and rendering the level unfinishable.

This jumble serves as the impetus for Pac-Man’s infinite run. A mass of scrambled characters rises from the bottom of the screen, and if it gets to Pac-Man, that’s game over. So he must chomp his way up the screen, avoiding or eating ghosts along the way.

The classic Power Pellet and all four original ghosts are here, but to diversify the gameplay a bit from the original, the developers added some fun wrinkles. Power-ups like a laser that shoots down whatever hallway Pac-Man is in (killing any ghosts instantly) or that turn Pac-Man into an AOE bomb mix things up nicely. Additionally, every ghost except Blinky (red, direct pursuit) behaves differently than the original game. Clyde (orange) simply embraces the void and tries to get to the bottom of the screen as efficiently as possible. Inky (Blue) patrols a strict route and will never directly pursue Pac-Man. Pinky (…pink) sits at intersections and pursues Pac-Man rapidly if he crosses her sights. Ghosts of new colors join the gang with their own unique behaviors as well.

The mazes are procedurally generated from a sizable set of pre-made chunks that dovetail together nicely. It doesn’t take long to memorize just about every layout you may see, but they’re just varied enough to keep you on your toes. Nearly every scenario is escapable with sufficient skill and preparation, so the sky’s really the limit with respect to high scores.

Basically, this game fuckin’ rules! It takes a considerable amount of time to max out Pac-Man’s abilities like I did, but it’s not like you have to do that. Furthermore, the game is just $5 on PSN and Xbox, and it’s gonna be a part of the new Pac-Man Museum+ dropping at the end of May.

I will say, it may be best suited to mobile devices, though. I let this game languish so long on my Xbox for a number of reasons (distracted by other games, migrated to a more PlayStation-heavy game diet over time, etc.), but I had a great time playing this on remote play on my phone by getting a phone clip for my Xbox controller. By doing that, I was able to enjoy it in an almost Switch-like manner while watching sports. This allowed me to mindlessly grind out the considerable coins it took to 100% this game, and I’m not sure I’d have ever done it otherwise. Streaming to mobile isn’t a perfect experience (even on my wired Series X connected to a gigabit internet connection and router), but it’s not half bad for a low-stakes game like this. It’s something I’ll definitely take more advantage of going forward, and it’s particularly nice to know it’s a solid option as baseball season gets into full swing.

But again, to be clear, my criteria for “beating” this game are somewhat egregious. If anything, it’s probably healthier to just conceive of it as an endless game and leave it at that. But I can’t have done all that grinding for nothing! So at least here’s a blog post to show for it.

Play Pac-Man 256. It’s good.