Pac-Man Arrangement

Not to be confused with a similarly titled but wholly different game that appeared in Namco Museum Battle Collection.

Pac-Man Arrangement is a remake of the game Pac-Man. It was released in 1996 by Namco as part of Namco Classics Collection Volume 2.

Gameplay

Like the original Pac-Man, Pac-Man Arrangement is a maze game in which the objective is to clear all Pac-Dots on the board by eating them and avoiding hazardous contact with the ghosts that also inhabit the maze.

There are 5 worlds, and after completing the 4th stage in the 5th world, Clyde, Pinky, Inky and Blinky will get into a machine and the boss battle is started. In this round, you have to avoid the ghosts' machine and the Kinkys that the ghosts send out. Each set of Kinkys are colored differently to represent the ghosts (red, pink, blue, orange). One set of Kinkys will go after Pac-Man. When the ghosts send out another set of Kinkys (in a different color) an S Bomb will appear. The S Bombs are color coded, just like the Kinkys and one of the ghosts. Eating it will destroy the respective Kinkys and turn the respective ghost blue. Once all of the ghosts are blue, a Pac-Man Bomb will appear. When eaten, the ghosts' machine is destroyed and the game ends.

In (at least) the arcade version, if one player is playing, and another player inserts a coin (unless free play is selected in the games options) and presses the 2P Start button, Player 2 will spawn a green Pac-Man that will play alongside Player 1. At the end of each level, scores for each player are counted up and the player who gets the most points wins over the other player.

Ghosts

Each ghost has characteristics similar to those displayed by their counterparts in the original arcade game. There is also a new yellow ghost with glasses named Kinky. While the four main ghosts are only edible for a brief period after Pac-Man eats an energizer, Kinky is always vulnerable to attack, and this is always blue except for when Pac-Man loses a life. If he is eaten by Pac-Man, he acts as an energizer, making the other ghosts vulnerable to attack as well for a brief time. In some levels, there are dash arrows on the ground that allow Pac-Man to rapidly zip from one end of the board to the other end. When on a dash panel, passing ghosts will make them dizzy and temporarily motionless. There are also additional power-up items that appear occasionally. However, when Kinky touches a ghost, they transform into a Ghost Mutant which they are harder to avoid. Kinky will choose a certain ghost to go towards each time he comes in. Clyde dashes when Pac-Man is in his line of sight, Pinky jumps anywhere in the maze, mostly near Pac-Man, Inky creates a reflection of himself that can harm Pac-Man, and Blinky adds more Pac-Dots to the maze. As levels progress, Kinky appears more often, causing more than just one ghost to be transformed unless Kinky is eaten. On the first world, if you eat Kinky the first time he comes out, he will reappear and try a second time. The number of times Kinky appears (as well as after Pac-Man eats him) increases with each world passed.

This is one of the Pac-Man games where Blinky and Clyde's names were switched.

Items

Items occasionally spawn at Pac-Man's regular spawning spot. These include wands, fruit and other objects.

The red wand makes Pac-Man speed faster, the pink wand sends ghosts into a pot, the blue wand makes Pac-Man have his own reflection, the orange wand makes Pac-Man gobble the dots faster, the yellow one adds 100 points, the stick transforms the ghosts into presents (and when eaten, the ghosts remain where they are until the effect wears off or Pac-Man eats them all), and the fruits, objects and 1-ups are special items.

Ports

This game is packaged along with Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, and nine other games in Namco Museum for PlayStation 2. Xbox, and Nintendo GameCube. It was also released with three other games in Pac-Man Collection.

Trivia

• The bullet item in rounds 15 and 16 came from the games Galaga and Galaxian.

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