Pac-Man joins Live Arcade

By Tom Bramwell Published 9 August, 2006

400 MS points, trial available.

Pac-Man has become the latest addition to Xbox Live Arcade this morning.

The trial version gives you two rounds to play through, while the full version is the vanilla game with 12 achievements to unlock - mostly for collecting fruit and other pick-ups in advancing levels.

The game's going for 400 Microsoft points this morning, which is the equivalent of GBP 3.40 / EUR 4.65 / USD 5.00.

Pac-Man of course marks the final chapter in the current run of Xbox Live Arcade Wednesdays, which have taken in Frogger, Cloning Clyde, Galaga and Street Fighter II' Hyper Fighting.

Microsoft's previously said it hopes to continue delivering games weekly though, and earlier this week a report suggested that we'd see the release of several other games - including Lumines Live - by the first Wednesday of September.

We'll let you know, obviously - and stay tuned for a Pac-Man Live Arcade review soon.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (14) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • McBradders #1 6 years ago

    Yay! Really been looking forward to Pac-Man. Being able to play it on a big telly sat on a sofa is something really awesome.

    Shame Namco aren't big on actually making anything out of their games like Frogger did. But thems the breaks I guess.

  • Grim... #2 6 years ago

    Meh

  • BEAR-ONE #3 6 years ago

    I hope it works fine in 50Hz, as my telly's picture is nicer that way than in 60Hz. On the other hand, MS should incorporate an auto-switch between 50 and 60HZ in their next dashboard release (user option of course) if they wanted to please "legacy TV" users like me...

  • smelly #4 6 years ago

    Why on earth would someone be worried about the framerate of pacman anyhow?

    The original ran at something like 10fps max :-)

  • Aretak #5 6 years ago

    "On the other hand, MS should incorporate an auto-switch between 50 and 60HZ in their next dashboard release (user option of course) if they wanted to please "legacy TV" users like me..."

    Well, you can change between 50hz and 60hz via the dashboard... what more do you want?

    As for Pac-Man, I think I'll stick to playing it while Ridge Racer 6 is loading.

  • LOLLERS #6 6 years ago

    is it in a tiny window like Frogger?

  • dbeamish #7 6 years ago

    imagine making htis and not Pacman vs ;)

  • Aretak #8 6 years ago

    "I think he means it should know when you are loading something that is PAL60 only and switch automatically, instead of failing to load the game with an error message and making you do it yourself, through the menu system..."

    Ah... I guess that makes sense. Honestly, I don't see why the method used by the Dreamcast hasn't been adopted. Giving the player an option between 50hz and 60hz when the game is starting up is surely the best way to go about it?

    Still, I'd think something like that would, and should, be pretty low on the list of things that Microsoft should be tinkering with.

  • brombeer #9 6 years ago

    Microsoft should focus on decent next-gen games, instead of the old-tried-getting-boring-pretty-soon stuff. It lacks console pushing, Xbox only games. I haven't turned the damned thing on in - ohh -about two months?

  • Jontacular #10 6 years ago

    @ Fluffytucker

    Pac-Meh, I think you mean?

  • korky #11 6 years ago

    Off topic somewhat but someone raised the refresh rate issue...

    The 50 / 60Hz switching is infuriating to VGA connected 360 owners (and component I believe?). I'm connected to my LCD via VGA but I also have to keep my composite connection handy so that I can boot in "legacy" mode and switch between 50 / 60 for different games. I then switch back to VGA mode where the setting is irrelevant! Arguably its the fault of the developers - they shouldn't be checking the 50/60 setting if you're connected using VGA / component - or MS should allow autoswitching as somebody suggested.

    For me, its a BIG issue and should be fixed as a priority...

  • BEAR-ONE #12 6 years ago

    ManicMiner, you hit the nail on the head. Sorry if I was'nt clear about it. I find it annoying that an error message pops up without the damn console even bothering to offer to change the frequency to 60 or 50 or whatever. You have to quit to the dashboard, go and change the frequency, and launch the game again. Boooooooring. I certainly was'nt worried about PacMan framerates otherwise ;)

  • Kiigan #13 6 years ago

    They should really just drop 50hz support completely.

  • BEAR-ONE #14 6 years ago

    Sorry Kiigan, but 50Hz is what makes the base of PAL. It's referenced (originally) to the 50Hz rate of the mains electric current. All PAL programs aired until today (and still for quite a while) are 25fps (with two fields per frame, hence the 2x25=50Hz) and many people still use TV sets that work best in real PAL (60Hz PAL is just not PAL), even with XBOX360s connected to them...

    But then I'll promptly forget about that when I buy myself a HDTV...

    Anyway, I downloaded the demo version of PacMan last night and for the life of me could not even muster the slightest bit of excitement at the view of a straight port of a 20 year old game. Not worth the €. Should be free.