Pac-Man Fever (2003) Review

Originally published Jan, 23 2023

Something I always love about browsing used game stores is running into oddities. Games I wouldn't really go out of my way to order but might grab if it's sitting on a shelf at a cheap price. And recently I found a game I'd previously only seen in magazine ads, Pac-Man Fever.

Pac-Man Fever takes the basic foundation of Mario Party but simplifies it. Every game is a race to the end of the board rather than a contest of who can collect the most things. The end of every round has a mini-game which determines how many spaces you can move in the next round. Your coin equivalents (which are cleverly arcade tokens) are mainly used to move yourself or other players forward/back on the board. These changes make Pac-Man Fever much more simple than Mario Party but that also means it loses alot of its chaotic energy. There's no real way to screw over other players, at best you can inconvenience them by moving them back a few spaces or taking some of their tokens.

The mini-games are unfortunately pretty bland overall. They run the gambit of really simple to kinda confusing. This game could've really benefitted from Mario Party's practice option. Easily the most stand out thing about the game is it's roster. Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man are joined by Heihachi and Tiger from Tekken, Astaroth from Soul Calibur and the lovely Reiko Nagase of Ridge Racer.

This selection of namco characters is the main reason I picked the game up although it makes me wonder who the audience for this game really was. The simplistic gameplay make me think this was intended for parents to play with their kids, but the roster is mostly made up of characters only avid game players would know.

Pac-Man Fever tries to offer a full game experience but with only 3 game boards and a small selection of mini-games I can imagine being disappointed spending 50$ on this back in the day. But for a tenner today it can make atleast make for an interesting afternoon.