Overview
Pac-Man Vs. is a multiplayer Pac-Man game using the Game Boy Advance-to-GameCube link cable. One person uses the GBA to control Pac-Man in one of several mazes, including the classic maze from the original arcade Pac Man, while the other players use the GameCube controllers to play as the ghosts. The narrator for the game is Charles Martinet, reprising his role as Mario.
Gameplay
The game starts with players choose whether they wish to play to 7,000, 10,000, or 15,000 points. Then, after picking a maze, the game randomly chooses one person to be Pac-Man. This requires players to switch controllers so that Pac-Man is holding the GBA.
The match begins and each player using a GameCube controller plays on the TV, with a third person view on their ghost, while Pac-Man plays on the GBA's screen. This allows Pac-Man to see the entire board while limiting the ghosts to their immediate vicinity. If there are less than four players then the remaining ghosts will turn gray. Players can then turn those ghosts to their color by touching them. When the player controlling Pac-Man eats a power pellet, the computer controlled ghost will be gray again after being eaten by Pac-Man and returning to the ghost spawn. Once Pac-Man is killed whoever was able to catch him trades their controller for the GBA and plays as Pac-Man. This continues until someone reaches the game's goal.
The gameplay of Pac-Man Vs. is identical to that of the original Pac-Man but it has been criticized for requiring both a GBA and a GameCube to play. This was resolved in Namco Museum DS, which featured Pac-Man Vs., for allowing multiple people to play on the Nintendo DS off of one cartidge.
History
The game was debuted at E3 2003 by designer Shigeru Miyamoto, with Namco not even being aware of its existence until Nintendo's press conference. Namco then decided to publish the game as a second disc in the GameCube Player's Choice re-release of Pac-Man World 2, as well as a pre-order bonus for the GameCube versions of R Racing Evolution and I-Ninja.
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