Wokka Wokka Wokka

Who doesn't know the sound of PAC-MAN? He's round, he's yellow, he's hungry, and he's indelibly printed on the hearts of kids of all ages. PAC-MAN first appeared in America in 1980. In that same year, Ronald Reagan was elected president, John Lennon was murdered, and the Iran-Iraq War officially began. Billy Joel's 52nd Street won a Grammy for Album of the Year. Almost immediately, PAC-MAN became an icon of eighties pop culture and of arcade gaming.

Xbox Live™ Arcade now has PAC-MAN available for you to download to your Xbox 360™. For those who have never played the game, just … wow. Here's how it works.

You are the one and only Pac-Man, stuck in a maze with wandering ghosts. You eat the Pac-Dots as you go along, and sometimes you'll discover special treats in the form of fruit or Power Pellets. Complete a level by eating all of the Pac-Dots in the maze.

Ready, set, eat!

The Ghosts
Your enemies in PAC-MAN are four ghosts determined to get you before you can finish eating all the Pac-Dots. These ghosts, Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde, each have their own distinct personalities and methods of chase.

Blinky, for example, chases you with determination and even speeds up once you've eaten a certain number of dots. Inky, on the other hand, tends to go for cutting off your escape. Watch the ghosts carefully to see if you can begin to predict their paths and outsmart them.

You turn the tables on the ghosts by eating a Power Pellet. These make the ghosts blue then you can hunt them down and eat them. They'll run from you while they're blue, so you'll have to be fast.  

The ghosts will flash blue as they're coming out of their vulnerable state, and you can still eat them then, you just have to be fast. One of the achievements in the game rewards you for eating all the ghosts after eating just one Power Pellet.

You eat Pac-Dots, and ghosts eat you.

The Fruit
Each type of fruit you can eat has a different point value. In order to max out your score, you'll need to eat them all. It wasn't until 1999 that someone finally got a perfect score on PAC-MAN, if you can believe it. Billy Mitchell of Hollywood, Florida, acheived the unthinkable.

In order to get the maximum score, he survived all the levels without losing a single life, eating everything in sight. It took him six hours. According to an official at the Twin Galaxies Official Video Game and Pinball Book of World Records,(www.twingalaxies.com) getting the max score in PAC-MAN requires an amazing amount of skill and is one of the most difficult feats in arcade history.

Eat the green grapes for the most points. They're worth a thousand. Cherries are only worth a hundred, and all the other fruit have values somewhere between these two. As you approach later levels, you will see different objects that are worth even more points. Eat the key, for example, and earn 5,000 points.

Blue ghosts taste best of all.

The Mazes
PAC-MAN has 255 different levels for you to tackle. Naturally, they get progressively more difficult as you progress. One of the new features for the Xbox Live Arcade version, is the ability to start from the beginning of any level you've already conquered.

This new option will let you see level 255 without an eight hour PAC-MAN marathon, but you'll start with no points with a new game, no matter what level you start on. This might be unthinkable to purists, but it will let you challenge the later levels without repeating the same early mazes over and over.

There are 12 achievements to earn in the game, for a potential total of 200 gamer points. Namco Bandai Games Inc., the developer, put a lot of thought into the achievements so they would add to the game's entertainment value on Xbox Live Arcade. Use them to challenge yourself, especially if you and PAC-MAN are already old friends.

The International Arcade Museum lists PAC-MAN as the #1 game selected by readers from all the video games ever made. In 2005, PAC-MAN entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the "most successful coin operated game" ever made. You can't argue with all the fans of this game. Check it out on Xbox Live Arcade, and you'll be wokka-wokka-ing through life with a smile on your face.

Article by Angel Leigh McCoy