Original Release: Namco, 2006, PS2/PSP/Gamecube/PC
This four-player racer goes beyond the Pac world to incorporate a number of other Namco properties, and while reviews were not kind it seems to have made a lot of kids happy in the mid-00s
Pac-Man World Rally (PSP, Namco, 2006)
Where to Buy: Amazon
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
Pac-Man World Rally is strongly centered on the Pacster, but it’s also sort of a de facto Namco mascot racer; you’ve got characters from Dig Dug and Mr. Driller in the lineup, and the courses range across various properties from Galaga to Katamari Damacy. I also sort of tailed off from the Pac series after the initial arcade games, so I wasn’t aware of all this extended lore where they have like a Pac Devil, a Pac Terminator and a ghost in armor who beats people with a mace or something. Interesting stuff.
The game looks very nice, and handles well, the biggest knocks against it being that it’s a little basic and a little chaotic. Sometimes it feels a little too party-game-y, mostly due to a slew of “salty bomb” weapons that seek out the lead driver and insta-jib them with no way to avoid them. Even with that it’s still not very tough when set to “normal” difficulty, and you’ll probably tear right through the courses if you have any experience with Mario Kart or similar racers at all.
The control schema is about as simple as it gets – X to accelerate, R to hand brake turn, L to deploy your current weapon. That’s all you strictly need to win races, but it has a few more little optional wrinkles that employ the other buttons. As you dorifto around corners you gradually build a special meter that allows you to create a temporary invincibility field when filled (with the O button). And once you eat up enough of the pellets scattered about, you can hit Triangle to go into “Super Pac” mode for a few seconds and have enhanced speed + invincibility while the other racers turn into scared ghosts. Finally, you’ll occasionally pick up fruits around the track that can be used to open corresponding doors for a little shortcut. I think some of the homing weapons spam might have been an intentional attempt to counter the huge advantage these give a competent racer who takes the lead.
While the basic track types pretty much go through the Mario Kart pattern of themes, they do look quite good, very detailed and varied with nice use of color. The action is also accompanied by a surprisingly good soundtrack populated with remixes of assorted Namco arcade game jingles. These come from the likes of Dweezil Zappa, Tommy Tallarico, and Rod Abernethy (has scored a ton of Ubisoft and EA games since the early 00s and is a major folk musician to boot).
When this came out the professional reviewers were absolutely savage to it, and you can see the disparity on the score aggregator sites (about 50% favorable for the reviewers vs 79% for the audience as I write this). I think this may have been a product of a weird glut of kart racers coming out along with this in the mid-00s, and during an “overlap” period where the PS2 and Gamecube were still viable but also the PS3/PSP and Wii were just coming out, so they were possibly being asked to review like five ports of the same bad game sometimes. Hell I think even M&Ms had some shiddy licensed kart racer right around this time. So during a different time period of less reviewer burn-out on karts, I think this might have been treated more fairly.
That said, it’s definitely not a top-tier kart racer and I wouldn’t seek it out unless you’re a big time Pac-Head (or just have to experience every decent kart racer ever). But if you were stuck with it due to some weird circumstances … you could definitely have some fun with it. It’s an at least passable Mario Kart knockoff that’s nice to look at and handles mostly competently, and it’s a contender for being the best one of its category on the PSP.
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