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Before the big splash of Saturday morning cartoon characters based on videogames hit the air (like Mario and Captain N), there was Pac-Land. Pac-Land was the very first videogame turned cartoon character, created by none other than William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. The ratings for this show failed, but not before it inspired its own game, a first in a videogame-turned-cartoon-videogame.

This coin-op adventure was successfully ported to the Atari Lynx, flaw by flaw. The game, despite its cartoon look and feel is quite responsive ... and challenging. It will require some good timing and patience to get past some of the baddies in this game. Speaking of bad guys, these are one for the record books. Not only do the enemies leaflet drop smaller enemies, and perform drive-bys, they also ride in on pogo-sticks.

Gone are the mazes, welcome an entire layered 2D world where you must jump over, under and around your enemies, and reaching for pick-ups that randomly appear. Pac-man can continue his odd fruit only diet, which picking up power pills that turn him into a ghost eating freak. The obstacles in this game are also very difficult. Having make you way around quicksand, over floating bridges, and springing over very large bodies of water; apparently Pac-Man can't swim either ... a trend that just seems to permeate through video games no matter what the genre.

For some reason, you are either controlled by a fairy, or you keep one under your Robin Hood hat. Either way, when you come to a "Break Area" the fairy gets out and has some fresh air, then quickly gets back under the cap. The story isn't all that great, so I'm not quite sure what you are doing, but you do it for 20 levels, through cities, canyons, deserts and forests. Some areas are actually blocking the actual character from view, behind a layer of trees and the like.

The story line as I understand it is about taking one of five trips, to deliver the fairy to where ever. Pac-Land is pretty much just running and jumping, nothing too special or over complicated. One thing that is nice is that the ghosts are random, making it difficult to devise a plan of action to take each time you play the same level. Being that you wanted to play the level over again, it would only take you a very short time to do so, making this game very short and limited in replay.

Being that this is the first Pac-Man game to ever break the very successful dot-eating-pizza-parlor formula, I have to give it credit, but not too much. Where this game makes up in innovativeness, it fails in everything else. The sound is horrible, and only loops one song taken straight from the TV show. The story is pretty bad as well, being that many other platformers up to this point had already shown what a good 2D story could be like ... I'm looking at you Mario.

Before Q*Bert, Pitfall Harry or Mario made a splash as Saturday morning cartoon characters based on a videogame, Pac-Man made his mark as the first ever videogame-turned-cartoon character. Created by the geniuses at Hanna Barbara, Pac-Man the cartoon didn't last long on the boob tube. However, one of the outgrowths of that project became the first ever videogame-turned-cartoon hero-turned videogame when Namco used the character as the basis for a side-scrolling coin-op adventure game. With the exception of Professor Pac-Man (a trivia game) and to an extent Baby Pac-Man (half-pinball), Pac-Land also was the first Pac game that deviated from the dot-eating, maze-chase formula that proved so successful in Pac-Man and its numerous sequels. This one breaks from the format by eliminating themazes and placing a running and jumping Pac-Man onto horizontally-scrolling levels of gameplay.

Pac-Man scampers through various environments (20 levels in all) such as towns, deserts, canyons and forests filled with his old nemeses, those pesky ghosts that hunt him wherever he goes. In this game, however, the ghosts zoom around in a variety of vehicles, including cars, buses, airplanes and even pogo sticks. Fortunately for Pac-Man, power pills pop up every now and then on each level, turning him into a ghost eating fiend. Aside from the ghosts, Pac-Man also has to contend with several other obstacles, including floating log bridges, quicksand and wide, ultra-deep pools of water. You're also under the gun because you've only got a set amount of time to make it through each level.

Don't let the cutesy and innocent-looking graphics and simple gameplay fool you. This is a challenging - almost frustrating - game which requires concentration and quick reflexes. Thankfully, gameplay is smooth enough to enable you to pull off most moves in a split-second.

Fans of the arcade game may get a kick out of a faithful translation to their favorite color handheld machine. The graphics are cartoony and the characters are colorful and nicely animated -- just like the cartoon. The catchy tunes come straight from the cartoon as well, although they're repetitive and can get annoying after awhile. To me, however, I never quite warmed to the coin-op, and I feel the same way about this one. Despite efforts to add variety to Pac-Land by including hidden items, warps and bonuses to try for, it doesn't have the depth of play offered in other platform games like any good Mario or Sonic game title. And while there are over five stages and a total of 20 levels to explore, they're rather short and can be completed rather quickly if you're good enough. You can fault Namco for some of the shortcomings in play, but give Atari credit for doing a good job of translating it to the portable screen -- flaws and all.


Title Pac-Land
Publisher Atari
System Atari Lynx
Graphics 7
Sound 7
Gameplay 5
Overall 5
Reviewer Keita Iida