Pac-Man World Rally

Gobble Munch Vroom!

NA release: 22nd August 2006
EU release: N/A
NA release: N/A
Developer: Smart Bomb Interactive
Publisher: Namco Bandai
NGC Magazine Score: 61%
Mods Used: None

With Namco creating Mario Kart Arcade GP for the GameCube-based Triforce arcade (featuring Pac-man), you would think that Pac-Man World Rally would be an easy one to make, but Namco got another developer (who made the alright Hot Wheels Velocity X) to make Pac-Man’s kart racer. I’m not sure anyone really cares all that much for the individual characters (they had to borrow a few and make their own up), so it’s all about the gameplay.

At least the fundamentals of driving and handling are well done, and nipping around the track is fun, with a really satisfying powerslide – just don’t play as a heavy character, they can’t perform it well and are horrible to play as. The courses are fairly interesting, too, with a unique shortcut mechanic. First someone has to find a switch to activate the fruit, then you need to find the right fruit to open a gate for a shortcut, often containing a powerful item.

The items are just, annoying. Even after playing the game I don’t really have any idea what most of them do. There’s a blue hovering bomb that is essentially a blue shell, a fake item box and a seahorse which does… something. As you race and get hit, a bar at the bottom will fill up, which lets you activate a shield to protect you for a short amount of time.

There are also pellets to collect on the map, collect enough and they turn into a power pellet. This gives you a special ability: you turn into a large Pac-man robot on wheels while everyone else turns into ghosts on unicycles, letting you eat them up if you race into them. It doesn’t seem to actually be as useful as it sounds, and it disables the powerslide so can also be a pain as well.

With only 15 tracks across four cups, there isn’t a lot here to keep things going for long, and the final cup only having three tracks is a bit strange – especially as they cut the track from the console versions (along with Mappy and Mr Driller as playable characters) to make exclusive to the PSP, but then forgot to move it from the opening intro. Making random stuff PSP exclusive seemed to be a thing at the time, and made no sense.

Fun

The final nail: it’s far too easy. Even on Hard, we were acing each race first time. With every track unlocked in under three hours, there’s little incentive to go back and play it ever again.
Mark Green, NGamer Magazine #3

Remake or remaster?

A re-release with the PSP stuff added would be nice.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to get Pac-Man World Rally 3