Ultrasonic’s thoughts: Super Pac-Man

With the success of the original Arcade game, where do you go from here?

Well, it’s simple-make more!

But what was interesting was that it was not Namco that went ahead with making the sequel at first. Rather, it was an outside developer that took charge.

For those who have played Ms. Pac-Man, this doesn’t require much of an explanation, given that General Computer had played a very big part in making that game. However, with the next game that followed, Namco was back in the driver’s seat, with the original creator Toru Iwatani at the helm.

Unlike the original and Ms., Super Pac-Man had the bonus fruits as the main things to eat, and not only that but you also had doors blocking the way to some of those fruits and the only way to get to them was by eating the keys. Sound simple, right? Well, there’s still one more feature to add. Besides the usual power pill power-ups there were also two Green power pills that would turn you into “Super Pac-Man”, where you not only grow in size, but the ghosts can’t touch you, and you’re able to chomp your way through the doors without needing to eat the keys, which can come in handy if you’re in a pinch.

Another cool feature is that you can now go into the Ghost’s house and if you ate a Power Pill you can pretty much take the fight to them on their own turf, which is pretty cool.

At first the keys you eat will open doors that are nearby, but as you go further the keys will open up doors at random places in the stage and not necessarily where you are. Moments like that are when the green dots will come in handy the most.

Along with the usual scoring you get from eating the fruit and ghosts after eating the regular Power Pills, there is a moment in the game where two pictures of fruit appear, with one randomly switching from one fruit to the other. If you can get to the center between the two fruits you get some points added to your score, but if you’re able to get there just as the fruits match, you get an even higher score. Naturally it takes timing to be able to get it right, but once you do, it helps a lot.

Along with the usual intermissions, this game is fun and much like it’s predecessors, it gets intense as you go along, so this is a game I highly recommend, the fact that it’s now available on the Switch is also awesome, given that the game takes me back to the Disney Quest days.

To no surprise this also lead to an appearance as a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, along with Fleep trading card stickers and such.

It’s also no surprise that there were console versions planned for the Atari 5200 and the Atari computers, but given that this was also during the Video Game Crash of ’83 the games never made it past the prototype phases. Other Pac-sequels were made as Arcades but with little fanfare.

But in all, the game lives on, and for this Arcader this game was definitely a distinct one during my Disney Quest days.

So if you are a fan of Pac-Man – and why wouldn’t you be? – Go and get this game!