Board 8 > Pac-Man 99 releases tomorrow.

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://mobile.twitter.com/NintendoAmerica/status/1379602342744571906

The next in the string of free battle royale games.

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Oh wow this is intriguing

Ehhhhh pass

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Looks awesome

T99 is still the best out of all of these though

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Mixed opinions based on the trailer. Has some stuff that makes it look "better than vanilla Pac-Man" but then it goes and plays on the default board only, which seems like it will wear itself out incredibly quickly. I'll need to watch some people play it to see if it has staying power. I'm theoretically more interested in this than Tetris, but I'm not sure if my interest level will be high enough to actually download it.

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theoretically this is super cool, but I dont know how achievable winning this one is going to be for most people compared to Tetris and Mario

I can lose one life in Pac-Man pretty dang fast without extra ghosts attacking me
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Ghost trains from Championship Edition heck yeah

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First try!



MoogleKupo141 posted...

theoretically this is super cool, but I dont know how achievable winning this one is going to be for most people compared to Tetris and Mario

I can lose one life in Pac-Man pretty dang fast without extra ghosts attacking me

Seems like youre not getting extra ghosts, instead youre getting Pac-Man outlines that slow you down when you run over them.

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Eventually there are red Pac-Men that also kill you, even when you have a pellet

Most of the rules are the same as Championship Edition: make fruit appear by eating enough dots; eat fruit to make dots, power pellets, and ghost trails reappear; chain power pellets to increase your ghost-eating combo

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Clearing all dots from the board permanently boosts your speed so it's probably worth clearing the first board, and then anytime you are either naturally close to doing so or on the rare time that only the power pellets respawn

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WazzupGenius00 posted...

Most of the rules are the same as Championship Edition: make fruit appear by eating enough dots; eat fruit to make dots, power pellets, and ghost trails reappear; chain power pellets to increase your ghost-eating combo

This sounds fun.

Which in turns makes it even more disappointing that there are no varying board layouts. They could do so much more!

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I can barely handle regular Pac-Man tbh.

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I'm really wondering why most of the DLC skins are named after the game they represent but then Sky Kid, Mappy, Metro Cross, and two other games I don't recognize are just "NAMCO CLASSIC [number]"

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Is that time trial mode part of the DLC? How is that mode? And for that matter how much does it cost?

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There's a Score Attack mode where you have three lives to score as much as you can, and then the time attack mode where you're trying to eat as much fruit as possible in the time limit. I don't like the time trial mode, there are all these weird quirks to it that aren't explained at all.

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I've learned that the best strategy is to turn off your brain and NOT use strategy. This isn't regular Pac-Man. You can play smart early game, but late game, don't try to, because a bunch of pacman that make you move in slow motion will get you. Just always go for power pellets with no strategy.

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Aw man, I would have won my first game but I didn't realize Power Pellets don't protect your from Red Pac-Man.

Can anyone explain to me what the "Strong/Speed/Train" setting does? I get that it affects what happens when you eat a pellet, but specifics would be nice. I noticed that if you set it to "Strong" the ghosts only stay blue for like a few seconds.

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its a little frustrating that there seems to be no tutorial information in this game at all. Dying to one of the red jammers because I assumed my power pellet would protect me felt super shitty. Also I still dont really get the power up stuff... occasionally I switch to speed on the assumption that it is making me faster, but I have no idea what the trade off is relative to the default mode.

I played like 45 minutes. I got 2nd once and 3rd twice. Matches are so fast. Its cool, but I dont know how long it will really hold my attention. Seems like Ill lose interest much quicker than with Tetris.
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I think the jammers screw me over more than the ghosts, not sure I like how oppressive they are as a mechanic

this is fun but I can already tell it'll need more maps to have staying power, since it has paid content they probably aren't planning on dropping it after a month though so I guess we'll see where it goes

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Online manual: https://pacapl.pacman.com/play/. Hope you can read Japanese.

The takeaways I've gotten from it (I might be wrong)

• Eating all pellets in a maze increases your Speed Level by 1. To a maximum of 10.
• White Pac-Men are wiped out by Power Pellets. Killer Pac-Men are wiped out by collecting fruit.
• Jammer Pac-Men are sent by eating ghosts. The red Killer Jammer Pac-Men are sent when the game goes on long enough.
• Sleeping ghosts can makes trains up to 32 ghosts long.
• Fruit will appear when you've eaten at least half the pellets that have appeared in the maze. Eating fruit moves on to the next maze and removes Killer Pac-Men
• You get Shields by KOing opponents. Shields will appear on the bar at the bottom and protect you from Jammer Pac-Men up to the amount of Shields you have.
• Powers activate when you get a Power Pellet. Faster increases your speed level by 2, but lowers your Jammer attacks by 75%. Train will double the number of Train Ghosts spawned by passing Sleeping Ghosts, but each Sleeping Ghost you wake up will spawn a Jammer Pac-Man in your maze(?). Stronger makes the Power Pellet only last 3 seconds and lowers your speed level by 1, but doubles the amount of Jammer Pac-Men you send. Standard has no benefits or disadvantages.
• Targeting: Hunter targets players with the most Shields, Knockout targets players who are close to losing the game, Random is random targets, Counter targets people who are targeting you, and apparently increases the amount of Jammers sent if you have a lot of people targeting you(?).

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Somebody being close to losing the game seems really arbitrary and impossible to measure in this game compared to Tetris or Mario. It should just be the slowest person or something

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Grand Kirby posted...

Stronger makes the Power Pellet only last 3 seconds and lowers your speed level by 1

It's worth specifying that, unlike the temporary speed increase from the Speed powerup, the speed lowering from using Stronger once is permanent (you'll see your speed on the left side decrease for good, even after the power wears off). As if the short power pellet time wasn't bad enough!

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I can't wait for Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures 99

99 people trying to tell Pac-Man to pick up the stupid milk jug and they still can't succeed

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99 people hang gliding hell yeah
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StealThisSheen posted...

I can't wait for Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures 99

99 people trying to tell Pac-Man to pick up the stupid milk jug and they still can't succeed

99 players shooting slingshots at the same Pac-Man on screen.

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TomNook posted...

It's worth specifying that, unlike the temporary speed increase from the Speed powerup, the speed lowering from using Stronger once is permanent (you'll see your speed on the left side decrease for good, even after the power wears off). As if the short power pellet time wasn't bad enough!

Interesting. I figured switching to Stronger before eating a bunch of ghosts and reverting back to something else would be an intended strat, but guess they don't want you doing that without harsher consequences.

This is pretty fun. Played about an hour til I finally won a match. Not sure I'll get as much out of this as Tetris 99 or Mario 35, since I'm not as big a fan of the base game here, but it's cool they keep cranking these classic BRs out nonetheless.

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StartTheMachine posted...

Interesting. I figured switching to Stronger before eating a bunch of ghosts and reverting back to something else would be an intended stray, but guess they don't want you doing that without harsher consequences.

I don't know how useful it is because it's hard to tell how effective Jammers are good at getting KOs, but I feel a decent strategy is to build up speed early on, and using the the "Train" power to set up long chains, then late game burning off some speed doing a "Stronger" Train eat and send a bunch of Red Pac-Man to people. The idea of building up Speed like ammo is kind of cool.

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It feels hard to strategize late game with the powers, because of how short the power pellet duration is then, and how fast everything is moving. It feels like all you can really focus on is planning each power pellet and fruit from your current position. One of my wins I got when it was down to 2 people, was that I just sat in the corner next to a power pellet and not moving since nothing was around me, and ghosts for some reason kept turning away from me when they got near for a good 7-8 seconds; just using that free time to breathe while my opponent was hopefully getting overwhelmed. I don't know how practical that is, since I clearly wasn't sending him anything. Worked that time.

It's fun to try and figure out what works and what doesn't.

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I think I've found some semblance of consistency. It's still much harder to be as consistent as Mario 35, because of the way the jammer pac-men sometimes spawn. You can be on your way to a power pellet or fruit with nothing in view, and suddenly 10 white jammers spawn pretty much on top you, and you have no way of avoiding a ghost. Outside of the random deaths, it's pretty easy to make top 5, and then it feels like RNG to an extent if you can win, just based on more jammer formation patterns.

What's been working for me:
-Before top 50, I set to Knockout for easy KOs. Switch to Hunter after that so I can knock out the best people before the very end.
-Use Train early game whenever I need a big train, but only use it late game when it's very safe.
-Only use Speed when I absolutely need to get somewhere fast, and don't plan on eating many ghosts. Late game, you'll be switching between this and Standard very quickly, because you need to send things to opponents with Standard, but you need to Speed through pellets to make sure you have a fruit ready.
-Almost never use Stronger. Burns your bridges early game. If you are down to 1 other opponent and you have a completely safe opportunity, go for it. But the risk is so high that if you mess it up, you'll lose. I tried toying with using it more often, and it just didn't seem worth it. But I might be wrong. I'll probably keep trying to mess around with it.
-Try to always clear the maze for the speed boost early game. You'll need them. Late game, you can still try for it if it's easy, but don't worry too much. It starts to get unrealistic with red jammers sitting on dots anyway.
-Stop moving near power pellets late game when it's chaotic and fast (but not when there are red jammers everywhere). This is one of the most important strategies. Wait for a ghost to get near you, then eat it. It allows you to guarantee at least 1 ghost will be off the board during your next trip to a pellet/fruit, so that's a smaller chance of getting screwed by white jammers slowing you down. Additionally, stopping to let a bunch of white jammers catch up to you is great as well.
-Don't let red jammers become too prominent. Once more than a couple show up, you want to get that fruit as soon as possible. You might think it's manageable, but suddenly more jammers spawn in, and you are done.
-Keeping chains up is great, but don't kill yourself over it. If you can alter your route a bit to keep the chain, do it, but if it's going to put you at any risk, even an unforseeable risk, don't do it.

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Well, what do you know- all those afternoons at Pizza Hut in the early 90s appear to finally be paying off!

I finished 12th place in my first game, then earned a Bronze Medal on my 5th try. From there it did take a couple hours of effort but finally I broke through for the big Pac Championship!

I'm now up to five wins overall, but I'm still a long ways from consistent. My average finish is only around 30 because I take too many chances in the first half of games trying to clear boards, and often something crazy happens all at once and I find myself dead outside the Top 50.

It appears I independently developed a strategy almost identical to what Tom posted above. I always try to get every dot on the maze in the opening minutes, aiming to be at Speed 3 by the time the Red Killers start to arrive (Speed 4 is ideal but I don't stress it). As soon as more than one Killer appears I switch into Pure Fruit Mode, just trying to eat half the dots as quickly as possible so I can race back to that fruit and melt them. Once its down to the Top Ten I hide out next to the pellets and bait at least one ghost into getting close enough for me to kill and free up a little space on screen on my way to the next corner (because invincibility doesn't even last long enough to get corner to corner at that point).

I've also had the same approach to the ghost trains, in that I only clean them up when I was already going to be looping around that area already (to eat dots or on my way to the next pellet/fruit). The only things I've done differently from what Tom suggested was to use Counter (I thought hitting more people was a winning strat, but it does sometimes backfire in the late game when 100 White Blockers come bouncing back at you) and Train (I actually should switch to Speed when needed but it's one extra thing to think about so I haven't tried working it into the routine yet).

The one thing I still don't really understand is Shields. I've gotten them maxed out with 8 KOs, and it still didn't feel like they were doing anything to keep me from getting Jammed Up. And are they supposed to offer some kind of limited protection from the Red Killers, or do they only help with the standard whites?

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Won on my second game of it.
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Whoa, just had an awesome experience! Got to Top Ten and was executing the strategy outlined above, everything was going well, got a couple kills... but one other player just wouldn't go down. It turned into a long final 1v1 standoff, I tried my best but eventually got trapped in a corner and couldn't escape. I checked the scoreboard and saw I'd been killed by a long-named Japanese player who for some reason looked familiar... went over to the Leaderboard right after and what do you know

I got murdered by the Worldwide Pac Champ; what an honor! It caught me by surprise because this was just after 3am his time, but I guess you need to game all night if you want to be the world's best. Personally I'm thrilled just to have a spot in the Top 2000.


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So disregard most of the strategy I said in my last post.

With that previous strategy, I thought I was doing pretty good. I was getting a win probably 25-35% of the games. I felt a lot of times the losses were beyond my control because of how fast the game was and white and red jammers spawning in bad locations.

But now, with the current strategy, I'm winning probably 80-85% of the games.

The new tips:
-Never use Standard or Stronger. Ever.
-Use Speed almost all the time. Train is fine when it's safe, mainly early game.
-Use Counter. This way you aren't really picking fights.
-Stall as much as possible. Never eat a pellet, no matter how early in the game, until you are forced. You want the Round # to be as low as possible. It doesn't matter what your speed is. Try to clear the first 2 boards, but there is no rush whatsoever. I win most games at Speed 2 or 3.
-The best stall tactic: Don't eat full trains. Nibble at them. Eat 1 ghost, then back out, then eat 1 ghost, then back out, etc. The slow down animation you create each time you eat one is crucial to stalling the game and adds up big time. When everyone else's board is moving at lightning speed, you aren't. You are able to plan routes through red jammers much easier.

This still takes skill of course, but it feels a bit different than before. Like a lot of battle royale games, I get disappointed when the stall tactic is clearly superior to anything. However, I'm glad that I spent so much time playing this like an action game, because whether or not other high ranked people are doing this (they probably are), I'm glad that I am used to playing the lightning speed boards, because I feel that's helped me a lot.


Obviously I don't win 100% of the time, but I did manage to do this.

What I'm particularly proud of, is that for 3 consecutive games, I beat the #1 ranked Pac-Man player in the final 2.

This strategy works. If any of you guys still play this, try it out and let me know.

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Finally won on the 101st try. I would rather have Mario 35 running at the same time but this has been really good.

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Has anyone gotten 10+ KOs? I got 9 on my 2nd win just now, I may never beat that.

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jcgamer107 posted...

Has anyone gotten 10+ KOs? I got 9 on my 2nd win just now, I may never beat that.

I've had 10 a couple times, but never 11 or more.

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Nice - I'd be curious to see a leaderboard for that

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