According to Planet GameCube, Pac-Man VS. is now shipping. That's funny, since I got one last Friday, four days ago.
After once again getting screwed by Toys R Us (even though I pre-ordered Double Dash, I didn't get the *!&@% demo disc), I ventured over to the GameStop at the mall. As a rule, I hate buying from the mall chains. The employees are usually smug, uneducated assholes. I do have a local EB that I don't mind, but I actively avoid all the nearby GameStop/FuncoLand hellholes; they just seem to be a haven for the poseur Matrix "mature" crowd. And I break out in hives when I see people selling back old games.
I was actually in the mall to pick up advance tickets for Return of the King, while Rhon did some food shopping in preparation for a family viewing of the Two Towers Extended Edition. Which was expectedly excellent, both the movie and Rhon's vegan razzleberry pie. Since TRU still has no Platinum Wavebirds, I hesitantly tried my luck at the GameStop.
Of course they had them. Everybody but goddamn Toys R Us has them. So I got one and impulse-shopped two packs of the Pokemon EX Dragon expansion. Weakness to Colorless! Why, it's evolutionary.
I was idly chatting with the 14 year old counter girl - who actually seemed to like games, a trait you don't often see in game store employees - when my eyes found a rubber-banded stack of Pac-Man VS. discs. Now, according to everything I've read, you can only get Pac-Man VS. as a free pack-in (!) with purchase of Pac-Man World 2, I-Ninja, or R: Racing Whatever. I had been planning on buying I-Ninja, based on the sample on a recent OPM demo disc. and as far as I knew, none of those games had shipped yet.
"What do I have to do to get that there Pac-Man VS.?" I asked. She shrugged and gave me one. Fo' free. And a day mired by the draining lack of a Double Dash demo disc became suddenly brighter. Lesson learned: seek out the good employees and a crappy store might pay off for you. And I might still get I-Ninja too.
We tried it out that night. If you don't know, dope, it's a masterpiece of hardware usage. One player plays normal Pac-Man on your Game Boy Advance while three other players control the ghosts on your GameCube, in a fancy split-screen 3D view. Required equipment: a GameCube, a GBA, a GC/GBA Link Cable, and multiple controllers (Wavebirds preferred.) When a ghost catches Pac-Man, you trade controllers and the former ghost gets to be the Man on the GBA. Since it's free, there's not a ton of modes... not even a 1P option; you just play until somebody gets 10,000 points or something.
It's very cool. A wonderful translation of a classic game that has pretty much languished in knockoffs, emulation and difficult franchise management for fifteen years. It must be said, however, that Pac-Man on the GBA is slooooow. Much slower than what you're used to from decades of Pac-play. I assume this is to facilitate the addition of human ghosts, as well as the technology gap between rendering 2D arcade pixels and fully 3D cartoony Cube graphics simultaneously.
So, you know, go get it. I hear it's finally shipping.
