System: Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Arcade)
Developer: Namco Bandai
Players: One player local

Editor’s note: This is a regular column in which Matt Bosko reviewn Xbox Live Arcade games. Since XBLA titles are smaller in nature than full-blown retail releases, the reviews are shorter than our other reviews and forgo the Criteria page.

New to the Xbox Live Marketplace is Pac-Man Championship Edition. Namco Bandai introduced this game for the first time at the Pac-Man World Championships held in New York in May. Can you make Pac-Man better, though? Namco Bandai thought so, once again enhancing the overall look and gameplay.

Pac-Man first appeared in the United States in 1980. Back then, the only way you could get your hands on it was in bars and pizza joints, or by dropping $35.00 on an Atari cartridge. Don’t worry; Pac-Man C.E. will only cost you 800 Microsoft points, or about ten bucks. It keeps the same premise, though, placing you in a maze with four ghosts that will try to stop you from having your fill of yellow pellets.

Pac-Man C.E. differs from previous installments in several ways. First, the mazes are no longer top to bottom, but instead take on a widescreen format. This gives you a bit more room with which to work. The biggest difference in the game, though, is the fact that there are no levels; rather, Namco Bandai placed time limits on six different maze modes. As you switch modes after a certain amount of time, the maze begins to morph into something different.

Another huge difference is the way pellets appear within the maze. The mazes are divided half, with the pellets appearing on one side of the screen at a time. After one half of the map is cleared, a piece of fruit or a key appears. Upon eating that object, the pellets reappear in a different formation than before. After time runs out or you lose all of your lives, the game presents you with a chart of your time, the points you earned and how you got your score (i.e. ghosts, pellets or fruits).

Pac-Man C.E. does have its downsides. For instance, there are several blue lines at the top and bottom of the mazes that are annoying until your eye adapts to them being there. Another thing is the lack of a two-player option. A competive mode would have done wonders for the game. The timed modes also limit the gameplay; they turn Pac-Man into a race against the clock instead of a battle to top one another’s score.

Overall, Pac-Man C.E. tries to make an arcade classic feel new, and it succeeds. The ghost A.I. has gotten better, as has the look of the game. In addition, the Achievements are moderate to hard, seeing as I earned about half of them in about 90 minutes. Until next time…

-Matt Bosko-

Want to see how you stack up against me in this game? Check me out on Xbox Live. My gamer tag is MattBWild11.