Pac-Man and his world are back! A remake from its PlayStation One platformer, Pac-Man World Re-Pac is now among us. Based on platformers from the same period, this game is solid and worth the attention of platforming lovers. It delivers what it promises and has quality all over it. It might be simple, but it does well what it set out to do. However, since it's a remake, there is a question we all think of in these situations: Did the devs change something?
Of course, they did! They always do it. Still, it is a rather faithful adaptation, and it might get you at first if you haven't played the original in a while. But there are things worth noting. Graphics won't be talked about, since that is too obvious.
5 Difficulty Changes
There are a few alterations when it comes to difficulty. Not that this remake was made particularly easier nor harder (aside from the Easy Mode we'll get into), but there were quality of life changes that have made an impact on the game's overall challenge.
The most noticeable of these changes was the inclusion of said Easy Mode, which places new platforms that make the whole traversal easier and gives you a "hover" ability that lets you stay in the air for an extra second, helping you with the longer jumps. Just beware that Easy Mode affects the overall high score, so you may not want it if that's a thing you're striving for during your walkthrough.
4 Bosses
Bosses received an individual overlook on each of them, with some being only slightly altered, while others were completely remade from the ground up. All of them also received health bars, so you can keep up with how much longer the fight may last.
The clown Prix is now in first person, making it a lot easier to see what's ahead; Windbag now has two different stages, one with more buttons to activate your defenses; Anubis has a different layout on the arena, which makes it easier at first, but he also has more attacks, making the fight faster-paced. Krome Keeper's and Toc-Man's were essentially redone, with only a few mechanics staying similar to the original. King Galaxian is pretty much the same replication of its namesake Galaxian (the one before Galaga). Still, he got a secondary health bar for his new tail attack.
3 Cutscenes
New visuals and reworked cutscenes are to be expected, so this doesn't seem like a big deal at first. If you haven't played the original in a while, you may not even notice that the intro cutscene is different; with the party being outside the house and the way most Pac-Family members were kidnaped also being different. However, there are more differences.
Still in the original intro cutscenes, two things can be noticed. First, there is a lot more dialogue, with the ghosts talking to each other about all of these multiple weird Pac-Men lying around (aka the Pac-Family). Second, the voice acting was changed. Unlike the original, where characters had actual speaking dialogue, here all they say is "gibberish", and you know what they're actually saying thanks to the subtitles. And that's not all.
The game also received multiple short scenes before every boss fight to introduce them, as well as showing the main baddie, Toc-Man, threatening you along with the bosses.
Finally, the game also offers you two different endings, depending on whether you saved all your family members throughout the adventure or not. Though none of them are particularly bad, there is a slight difference between them. It is a very curious detail, more than anything.
2 Mega Pac-Man
Mega Pac-Man is a bigger version of our protagonist, who is also just a head in this form. It has appeared in more modern games of the series, and they've decided to put it here as well, whenever you eat a Power Pellet. This transformation gives you a clearer understanding of when you can eat ghosts during your adventure, instead of the simple music swap that happened in the original game.
Changing your size isn't the only thing, however. You can also destroy some of the objects in your way, making it a lot easier to hunt down the pesky ghosts. You can also jump in this form, so you can "break" the maze sections from the main levels and cheat on some of them while going after said ghosts. The only downside this transformation gives us is blocking our view sometimes due to the size, but it's a minor inconvenience at best since the camera isn't that close to Pac-Man most of the time.
1 Pac-Family
Your goal in this game is to save your kidnaped family. That hasn't changed. After all, changing that could break the plot, but there were two interesting alterations when it comes to Pac-Man's family.
The first and rather odd change is that saving them is no longer a necessity, but instead a side objective. Curious, considering how that is the plot of the game. You can now reach the ending without freeing any of them, though they're necessary for those who want to accomplish everything the experience has to offer.
Another difference is that these characters are part of the series canon. However, some of them got their names changed and, the most notorious of all, Ms. Pac-Man was cut from the game entirely and replaced by a new character, Pac-Mom. It's not even clear if the mom part stands for being Pac-Man's mother or the mother of his children honestly. But this change was likely because of the rights concerning the character of Ms. Pac-Man.