Pac-Mania

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Pac-Mania

Pac-Mania is the last arcade game in the Pac-Man series. It was released by Namco in 1987 and licensed to Atari Games for U.S. manufacture and distribution. It runs on Namco's System 1 hardware, making it the only arcade title in the series to use a Yamaha YM-2151 FM sound chip for its songs, and a Yamaha YM-3012 DAC for the applause sound at the end of each round.

Just like most of the other games in the Pac-Man series, the object is for Pac-Man to eat all of the pellets before he is caught by the ghosts. This game has several significant changes from the original format. The first and most noticeable change is that the board is viewed in an isometric 3D format. Because of this, it can sometimes be difficult to remember where the ghosts or the remaining pellets are. Secondly and more importantly, Pac-Man can now jump. This in principle makes evading ghosts easier.

The ghosts are Blinky (red), Pinky (pink), Inky (light blue), Clyde (orange), Sue (purple and from Pac-Land) and two new ghosts, Funky (green) and Spunky (gray). Each of the ghosts now has a unique expression on his (or her, in the case of Sue) face.

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The most significant feature of the two new ghosts is that they can jump whenever Pac-Man jumps as well, beginning on the sixth and eighth rounds of the game respectively. However, Funky cannot jump as high as Pac-Man and with good timing, Pac-Man can jump over him. Spunky however, jumps just as high as Pac-Man, and thus cannot be jumped over at all; often he will appear at the worst possible times, blocking any escape route (they continue to be able to jump when edible, and even their bare eyes continue to jump up after they have been eaten and are returning to the ghost regenerator at the centre of the maze).

Making the game even more difficult, is the fact that that the ghosts will often travel in groups spaced in such a way as to render jumping ineffective, even if Funky and Spunky are not present. Even worse, after the fourth round, Funky usually appears in pairs, and the last few rounds have pairs of Spunkys as well. Since this can add up to as many as nine ghosts on a round, the scoring for eating them is the familiar 200, 400, 800, and 1600, followed by 3200, then every ghost eaten thereafter is worth 7650 points.

Finally, the bonus items that appear in the centre of the maze include not only fruits but also additional pellets that cause effects such as making Pac-Man go faster for a short period of time, or doubling the amount of points Pac-Man gets from eating ghosts until he's killed. There are also assorted edibles including wrapped candies, cups of coffee, ice cream cones, hamburgers and Galaxian flagships, which are all worth more than the fruits. (Note: This guide was written for the Japanese version of the game).

Pac-Mania

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