Pac-Man World

Pac-Man World is a 1999 platform game developed and published by Namco Hometek for the PlayStation. Controlling Pac-Man, the player must complete each of the game's six worlds by collecting keys to free his captive family members, and reaching the end of each stage. The plot follows Pac-Man on a journey to Ghost Island, where his family is being held hostage by someone claiming to be the real Pac-Man. The game originally began as an open-world adventure game titled Pac-Man Ghost Zone, with development headed by director Bill Anderson and designer Scott Rogers. After being unhappy with the game's quality, Namco scrapped the game and fired nearly the entire team aside from Rogers and a few others. The development team focused on making the game live up to the "flavor and feel" of the original Pac-Man, and to successfully bring the character into an enjoyable 3D adventure game. Pac-Man World was a critical and commercial success, selling over 1.25 million copies in North America alone. Reviewers praised the game's originality, colorful graphics, gameplay mechanics, and soundtrack, although some criticized the gameplay for being repetitive due to its constant use of backtracking. A Game Boy Advance version was developed by Full Fat and released in 2004, while the PlayStation version was digitally re-released for the PlayStation Network in 2013 under the PSone Classics brand. It was followed by two sequels, Pac-Man World 2 (2002) and Pac-Man World 3 (2005), and a racing spin-off, Pac-Man World Rally (2006). A remake developed by Now Production and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment, titled Pac-Man World Re-Pac, was released in August 2022.