Pac-Man World Rally Preview

The ghost eater returns yet again, only this time he’s brought his wheels.

Source: IGN

Pac-Man World Rally attempts to take the greatest aspects of classic kart racers like Super Mario Kart and place them in the world of Pac-Man while expanding upon its basic design in a few ways. While the game includes all of the classic Pac-Man characters that you’d assume to find in the game, it also brings in other classic Namco characters to race with. One of the characters we saw with our time with the game was Pooka from Dig-Dug, the circular guy with goggles who you so often inflated to his demise back in the ’80s. Fitting well with his Dig-Dug roots, he drives a driller kart. While we haven’t seen any other classic Namco characters yet, there should be a nice set of them, each with their own kart that matches the style and setting of the game they originally appeared in.

The game’s tracks are designed to contain a whole lot of jumps and such to keep racers on their toes. There are certainly more jumps than many other kart racing games, and we haven’t seen many of the game’s later levels, which will likely be packed with more jumps than you can throw at Evel Knievel. The game will contain 15 different race tracks, each with its own unique theme, in addition to six battle arenas for multiplayer action.

We were able to check out a couple tracks during our first look at the game, one of them being some sort of haunted castle with a graveyard just outside of it. This particular track has a few 180+ degree turns inside the castle, including one that’s big enough that it’s easy to get turned around on. The track follows a pretty good art style that somewhat resembles that of the castles in Super Mario 64; mostly cartoonish with a throw back to the old-school days of 8-bit gaming in some of its simplistic (but cool) designs.

A second track we saw was located in some sort of cavern filled with lava. The track winds around the outside of a giant lake of lava, with some jumps that connect pieces of the track and launch you over rivers of lava. One catch here is that towers of hot lava can shoot up between these jumps, knocking you out of commission for a few seconds.

Aside from ghosts, the other major elements that make Pac-Man what it is are its pellets and Power Pellets. In Pac-Man World Rally, you’ll find pellets scattered around the track, and once you collect enough of them you’ll essentially earn a Power Pellet, which automatically switches you to control over a Super Pac-Mobile. All of the other racers will change to blue ghosts, allowing you to gobble up anyone in your way for a short time. It’s a pretty neat way of tying in one of Pac-Man’s trademark gameplay elements while not having it be a mandatory element to the races.

In addition to transforming into a Super Pac-Mobile, there are a ton of other weapons and pickups you’ll have at your disposal. They work in a similar fashion to the Mario Kart series in that you’re able to either toss them up in front of you are drop them behind you to foil your foes in the rear. One of the “weapons” that we saw is a snowman who covers the track in ice, causing your opponents to spin out of control.

You’ll also be able to collect Pac-Man’s signature fruit pickups, which in Pac-Man World Rally unlock secret shortcuts, meaning they’re essentially keys. In the haunted castle track we tried out, for example, there’s an iron gate that leads through a graveyard and contains a whole slew of pellets to grab. In order to get into this, you’ll have to pick up the fruit first so that the gate cracks open. After a fruit is used, it leaves your inventory, which means that you must grab the grapes or whatnot every time around the track in order to hit the shortcut every time as you can’t double-up on them.

Pac-Man World Rally is coming to every current-gen console, the PC and PSP, but the only version that will be online is said to be the PSP version, which will get both Ad-Hoc and Infrastructure play. As the game is intended for kids of all ages, Namco decided it would be best to keep the console versions offline so that kids wouldn’t wonder into the same room as jonnyl337h4x0r and be subjected to his curse-filled hate speech.

Pac-Man World Rally is set to ship sometime in the summer of 2006, giving it plenty of room to breathe before its release. What we’re able to make of it so far is that it looks like an enjoyable family-friendly title that should be good fun for any fan of the kart racing genre. There’s still a whole lot more for us to see as we’ve only had a small taste of the game of course, but what Namco has shown already looks like its ready to ship, so we’re guessing that Namco is taking its sweet time to polish this one up for its release next summer.

The ghost eater returns yet again, only this time he’s brought his wheels.

Source: IGN

Pac-Man World Rally attempts to take the greatest aspects of classic kart racers like Super Mario Kart and place them in the world of Pac-Man while expanding upon its basic design in a few ways. While the game includes all of the classic Pac-Man characters that you’d assume to find in the game, it also brings in other classic Namco characters to race with. One of the characters we saw with our time with the game was Pooka from Dig-Dug, the circular guy with goggles who you so often inflated to his demise back in the ’80s. Fitting well with his Dig-Dug roots, he drives a driller kart. While we haven’t seen any other classic Namco characters yet, there should be a nice set of them, each with their own kart that matches the style and setting of the game they originally appeared in.

The game’s tracks are designed to contain a whole lot of jumps and such to keep racers on their toes. There are certainly more jumps than many other kart racing games, and we haven’t seen many of the game’s later levels, which will likely be packed with more jumps than you can throw at Evel Knievel. The game will contain 15 different race tracks, each with its own unique theme, in addition to six battle arenas for multiplayer action.

We were able to check out a couple tracks during our first look at the game, one of them being some sort of haunted castle with a graveyard just outside of it. This particular track has a few 180+ degree turns inside the castle, including one that’s big enough that it’s easy to get turned around on. The track follows a pretty good art style that somewhat resembles that of the castles in Super Mario 64; mostly cartoonish with a throw back to the old-school days of 8-bit gaming in some of its simplistic (but cool) designs.

A second track we saw was located in some sort of cavern filled with lava. The track winds around the outside of a giant lake of lava, with some jumps that connect pieces of the track and launch you over rivers of lava. One catch here is that towers of hot lava can shoot up between these jumps, knocking you out of commission for a few seconds.

Aside from ghosts, the other major elements that make Pac-Man what it is are its pellets and Power Pellets. In Pac-Man World Rally, you’ll find pellets scattered around the track, and once you collect enough of them you’ll essentially earn a Power Pellet, which automatically switches you to control over a Super Pac-Mobile. All of the other racers will change to blue ghosts, allowing you to gobble up anyone in your way for a short time. It’s a pretty neat way of tying in one of Pac-Man’s trademark gameplay elements while not having it be a mandatory element to the races.

In addition to transforming into a Super Pac-Mobile, there are a ton of other weapons and pickups you’ll have at your disposal. They work in a similar fashion to the Mario Kart series in that you’re able to either toss them up in front of you are drop them behind you to foil your foes in the rear. One of the “weapons” that we saw is a snowman who covers the track in ice, causing your opponents to spin out of control.

You’ll also be able to collect Pac-Man’s signature fruit pickups, which in Pac-Man World Rally unlock secret shortcuts, meaning they’re essentially keys. In the haunted castle track we tried out, for example, there’s an iron gate that leads through a graveyard and contains a whole slew of pellets to grab. In order to get into this, you’ll have to pick up the fruit first so that the gate cracks open. After a fruit is used, it leaves your inventory, which means that you must grab the grapes or whatnot every time around the track in order to hit the shortcut every time as you can’t double-up on them.

Pac-Man World Rally is coming to every current-gen console, the PC and PSP, but the only version that will be online is said to be the PSP version, which will get both Ad-Hoc and Infrastructure play. As the game is intended for kids of all ages, Namco decided it would be best to keep the console versions offline so that kids wouldn’t wonder into the same room as jonnyl337h4x0r and be subjected to his curse-filled hate speech.

Pac-Man World Rally is set to ship sometime in the summer of 2006, giving it plenty of room to breathe before its release. What we’re able to make of it so far is that it looks like an enjoyable family-friendly title that should be good fun for any fan of the kart racing genre. There’s still a whole lot more for us to see as we’ve only had a small taste of the game of course, but what Namco has shown already looks like its ready to ship, so we’re guessing that Namco is taking its sweet time to polish this one up for its release next summer.