Released in April 1994, Namco created the first Pac-Man game where the main objective wasn't eating a bunch of dots. Pac-Man sets out to foil the evil Ghost Witch of Netor's plans to terrorize the city with her ABC Gum monster. Along the way Pac-Man must undergo other tasks such as getting Pac-Baby milk, picking flowers for Lucy's birthday gift, and helping Junior get his guitar back from the evil ghosts Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde.
Best time: single-segment 0:32:03 by Benoit 'TJazZ' Boudreau on 2007-02-04.
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Author's comments:
I bet a lot of people never thought this game would ever be speedran. What's difficult and sometimes frustrating about this game is the fact that you don't have direct control over Pac-Man and he has a lot of mood swings. On top of that, often times you need Pac-man in a specific mood to accomplish a specific task so the hard part in speedrunning this game was planning the fastest route which means finding the right combination of actions and moods. Also, like in any other Pac-Man game, power pellets can be used to eat the bad guys but in this game they also make Pac-Man fly across the screen faster than his normal walking speed so I use this to my advantage in pretty much every level.
Level comments:
Easy mission. It was easily done perfectly.
Only 1 power pellet is needed in this mission. The "Stock Farm" screen is the one which takes the most time so skipping it with the two spare power pellets at the very beginning and very end of the mission is the fastest route. Anyways, the mine cart went down smoothly but could have been maybe half a second faster. In case you are wondering, in the "Construction Area" screen, getting hit by the drop of water is actually a good thing because it gets Pac-Man angry. Why is that a good thing? It's because he only has to look at the machine once in order to fix it when he's angry. The hang-gliding and flower picking screens went down perfectly.
Two power pellets are needed in this mission. It's faster to use the spare pellet in the "Industrial Area" because it's more than 60 seconds long compared to the "Sewer" and "Stock Farm" screens which are approximately 50 seconds and 45 seconds respectively. The execution of this mission was pretty much flawless, honestly. The triggers to get the "security guard" to appear are as followed: break the fire hydrant; walk through the sewer; get in the secret lab; once out of the secret lab, walk out of "Industrial Area" then walk back in coming from "Main St."...? That's the trigger, don't ask me why. The mission is over once you beat the "security guard" and walk back to Pac-Man's house.
Two power pellets are needed in this mission. However, it's pretty clear that the best place to use to use the spare pellet is in "Main St.". The reason is simple, it's because Pac-Man needs to be angry in order to break the fire hydrant the first time he sees it leaking and the only way to get him angry is by shooting him once with the sling shot (this only happens when he's feeling happy. If you shoot him when he's feeling sad he will just get even sadder). However, since he's feeling sad after the rooftop screens his mood needs to be boosted to happy mode by using a power pellet. I made my only real mistake here. I should have tried to land a little farther away from the fire hydrant because when I landed it grabbed Pac-Man's attention before I was able to get him angry which cost a little time. Once the fire hydrant is broken, all that is left to do is going through the secret lab once again and beat evil Gum Monster!
I hope you enjoyed this run.