This article originally ran in Back Alley Games Issue 11, January 2025

My philosophy for buying games is a two-step process. It starts with “do I want to play this?” and ends with “is it on sale?” PAC-MAN WORLD Re-PAC would only fulfill the second criteria if it weren’t for my childhood experiences playing the original Pac-Man World. 

That childhood memory is foggy enough to make this remake serviceable for me. The visuals were only slightly disorienting, and I can chalk many of my platforming failures up to my own inability to be good at 3-D platformers. 

So, why am I talking about it?

My experience was hampered entirely by a slew of questions unrelated to both gameplay and visuals. Those questions are about the Pac-Man lore. The most prevailing of them is: “who is Pac-Man’s wife?”

This is shockingly hard to answer. “Ms. Pac-Man!” I hear you all yell at this magazine. You are all wrong.

You are all wrong because Namco cannot distribute media with Ms. Pac-Man in it anymore without paying some nerds that went to MIT money.

Okay, let’s break this down. Ms. Pac-Man started in 1981 as a mod (not entirely true, but for these purposes, it’s fine) for the original Pac-Man cabinet called “Crazy Otto” created by some students at MIT. Namco caught wind and shut them down, but not before they sold their mod to Midway, the American distributors of Pac-Man, who would release it as Ms. Pac-Man the following year.

Lawsuits ensued, eventually ending with a royalty agreement between GCC (or General Computer Corporation, the MIT nerds) and Namco penned in 1983, though litigation did not end until 1987.

All was well, the nerds got their cut on all “coin-operated” appearances of Ms. Pac-Man, and she went on to appear throughout the 90s as an integral part of Pac-Man lore. She had kids with Pac-Man. She had a mom.

That is, until Namco released a throwback arcade machine starring the beloved wife and mother without paying those nerds. They sued, and a court determined that they were entitled to royalties on any appearance of Ms. Pac-Man that is sold to consumers for money (that seems like an incredibly broad application of “coin-operated,” but I’m not a judge). 

Thus begins the efforts to replace Ms. Pac-Man, and by extension, my confusion. First, they landed on Pac-Man Girl, who is lame and doesn’t have sexy legs or a pink bow. Then Pac-Marie, who has a ponytail for some reason (do Pac-people have hair? I dislike these implications). Finally, Pac-Mom, the source of my confusion.

Pac-Mom has a wide pink sunhat, sexy legs, pink gloves, makeup, and an affect that suggests promiscuity. Oh, and she looks exactly like Ms. Pac-Man’s mother, Ms. Pac-Master. Why does Pac-Man’s new wife look like his former mother-in-law? Why does he call her “Mom?” Why does she imply she wants to have sex with him? Where’s Ms. Pac-Man? This is not my beautiful wife. This is not my beautiful home.

Anyway, I played the Pac-Man World remake. I’d give it three stars.