Jeremy Parish
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NES Works Gaiden #044: Mach Rider / Onyanko Town / Pac-Land
🕑 Added 2022-09-14 11:50:12 +0000 UTCI guess the lesson for this week is: Sometimes, you just gotta stick with the classics. Pac-Man goes off on an adventure and it looks and plays pretty poorly on Famicom. Meanwhile, Pony Canyon and Micronics get together and say, "Hey, it's 1995, the world clearly wants a new Pac-Man alike!" And then they put together a screechy clumsy traditional maze chase that is, somehow, really good?? I don't get it, either.
Also, there's Mach Rider.
Comments
TheyCallMeSleeper
I actually own (or "own") this port of Pac-Land via Wii U Virtual Console. Honestly, I'm not too upset over it. It's a rather okay game, nothing spectacular, but it was nice to be given the chance at discovering it. If it's the worst that Namco could have done for a Famicom arcade port, then that honestly is more of a bit of praise towards them rather than a scathing indictment.
Vinushika
Further evidence that Micronics when given an appropriate license (or not, in this case) and ample resources like the massive war chest Pony Canyon clearly had back in those days, they do just fine. I always love it when you end up with a Heiankyo Alien to talk about, and I looked up that Columbus Circle version after the video: it's fantastic! Pac-Land looks even worse than I expected it would on this system. I'm amazed that after Super Mario Bros. that Namco would later inflict this game on unsuspecting PC Engine owners, still with the same terrible control scheme. In any case, I'll re-raise what another commenter has said here and at 6:00 you might want to re-edit the double line read. It's isolated enough that a snip should not require re-recording.
