Pac-Man Pinball Advance

Pac-Man Pinball Advance
Original box art.
Developer	Human Soft
Publisher	Namco Hometek (licensee) DSI Games (US) Zoo Digital Publishing (EU)
Series	N/A
Game system(s)	Game Boy Advance
Genres	Pinball
Release date(s)	US: May 2, 2005 EU: August 2005
Number of players	1 player

Pac-Man Pinball Advance is a Game Boy Advance game, developed by Human Soft and released in 2005.

Overview

Story

Late one night, Professor Pac-Man shows Pac-Man his newest invention: the Pac-Finder, a machine capable of locating and recovering lost residents of Pac-Land. Professor Pac plans to perform a test run the following day. Pac-Man, who is too eager about seeing the Pac-Finder in action to sleep, wakes up early that morning. Much to his dismay, Pac-Man discovers a note from Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde stating that they have kidnapped all the residents of Pac-Land.

Gameplay

Pac-Man Pinball Advance is a basic virtual pinball game. It has two pinball tables: Pac-Village and Haunted Boardwalk. Both tables also have two skins. One skin depicts them as typical pinball tables while the other places them in outdoor locales.

Pac-Man himself is the pinball, and the player must keep ahold of the ball for as long as possible, while racking up points. The Ghost Gang stands around the sides of the flippers, awaiting Pac-Man's inevitable fall(s); however, eating a Power Pellet will cause them to run around the playfield, and can be eaten for extra points.

Pac-Dots appear scattered around the table, which are used as a form of currency. Dots can buy the following items:

• Fruit - 20 dots.
• Power Pellet - 30 dots.
• Call Ms. Pac-Man (multi-ball) - 40 dots.
• Ball Saver - 50 dots.
• From 3 to 1 - 75 dots.
• Escape from maze - 100 dots.
• x4 Bonus Round - 300 dots.
• Extra Life - 500 dots.

Beating the Game

As the story implies, the true "goal" of the game is to rescue the eight kidnapped Pac-Residents—Chomp-Chomp, Super Pac-Man, Pac-Ranger, Sue, Handy Pac, Pac-Man Jr., and Fisher Pac, with the final rescue being Professor Pac.

However, it is extremely difficult to actually perform this task since it requires performing multiple tasks in a specific order:

1. The player must first hit three targets on the board. The targets are panels that lower when Pac-Man hits them. Depending on the table the player chooses, the targets will be in different locations. They are located on the lower left edge of Pac-Village and around the center (adjacent to where the Ghosts first appear) of Haunted Boardwalk. When a target is hit, it will spawn a Power Pellet; while this allows Pac-Man to eat the Ghosts for bonus points, it is not necessary to do so at this point. Once all three targets have been hit, the player will have thirty seconds to complete the next step, or they must restart the process.
2. The player must then make Pac-Man pass through the Pac-Man Spinner, a rotating panel with Pac-Man's face on it. The location of the Spinner also changes depending on the table. On Pac-Village, the Spinner is located at the top right, next to the gated area where the Ghosts first appear. On Haunted Boardwalk, it is located on the left end of the table's giant boardwalk. The Spinner is used to fill a gauge that appears on the bottom of the screen. When the gauge is completely filled, Pac-Man is able to enter Professor Pac-Man's house.
3. Like the targets and the Pac-Man Spinner, the location of Professor Pac-Man's house changes depending on the table the player has chosen. The house is located next to the three Pookas in Pac-Village, but on Haunted Boardwalk, it is on the lower right edge of the table, adjacent to the mine cart lift. Once the house has been opened, the player has thirty seconds to get Pac-Man inside before it closes again.
4. If the player has completed all three previous steps, one of the lost Pac-Land residents will spawn. They will start moving around randomly across the table while Blinky chases them. In order to rescue the denizen, Pac-Man must defeat Blinky using a Power Pellet from one of three targets. To make this task easier on the player, the game automatically enables the ball saver and multiball during this period. If the player succeeds, the resident will enter Professor Pac-Man's house, marking the end of the level.

The player must repeat this process eight times to rescue all the lost residents. As Pinball Advance does not allow the player to continue after losing all their lives, this must be done in one very lengthy sitting. Completing this task will prompt an animated message saying, "CONGRATULATIONS!" to appear on the top of the screen accompanied by the text, "You have rescued all the citizens." on the bottom. The player is also presented with the option to continue their game from that point, start a new game entirely, or return to the main menu.

Trivia

• A sequel titled Super Pac-Man Pinball for the Nintendo DS was planned, but was canceled (almost immediately after its announcement) for unknown reasons.
• This game's cover art was reused for Pac-Man Power Pack, a compilation for the PlayStation 2.
• Pac-Man Pinball Advance is the only game in the series to portray Super Pac-Man as a distinct individual from Pac-Man rather than as a transformation the latter can assume.
• The DSI Games website featured several early screenshots of the game; in addition to showing a much more primitive HUD, there are only two boards instead of four, both being the "Pac-Village" tables. The first form is dubbed "Pac-Land", while the other form is labeled "Machine World"; this may explain why the second Pac-Village table has a "gear" theme for its playfield design.
  • Additionally, the DSI website featured a PDF of the game's manual. Bizarrely, it seems to be a copy of the master file for production printing (presumably sent to Nintendo); having margins for page-sizing and cutting, and showing parts of the front artwork that would be cut off in the printing process.
• According to a November 2005 financial report, Pac-Man Pinball Advance sold 200,000 copies at retail at the time.

Gallery

Screenshot.

Game completed when all 8 friends are rescued.

References

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