Pac Man and the Ghostly Adventures takes a page out of old school marketing: video game, TV show, and then a toy line.
My hands-on with Namco Bandai started off with the company not being able to locate my name on the sign in sheet. You might think this was a red flag and my session would continue this bad luck trend. It was just a misunderstanding and my name was located and I was allowed into the meeting room. Inside the room, there were refreshments and playable demos for Namco Bandai games such as Pac Man and the Ghostly Adventures and Project X Zone. I was going to get the chance to play two of the games I wanted to see from Namco Bandai before the show and I was going to get that chance.
I jumped on with Pac Man and the Ghostly Adventures and was happy with what I saw. Pac Man and the Ghostly Adventures is territory that Pac Man doesn’t venture into too often, the world of the platformer. It works for Pac Man in this instance. Developers from Namco wanted to get to the newest generation of video game player and they are going about this in two ways. The TV series route and the toyline route. Pac Man will have a TV series to coincide with Ghostly Adventures on Disney XD starting June 17th. There will also be toys that go along with the TV show/games as well. The TV show has the same look as the game that will appear on four platforms, Xbox 360/PS3/Wii U and is being developed for the 3DS.
The game looks and plays like a combo between Mario 64 and Pac Man. Collect the power pellets in the city while eating ghosts along the way. The area is an open world and there are interesting additions to the Pac Man world. The Green power pellet transform Pac Man into Chameleon Pac Man and you can use the tongue to grab certain things like polls to swing from. You can also eat ghosts with the tongue, a la Yoshi tongue.
