Has anyone ever heard of a Pac-Man Board game? On top of being a nice collection piece due to it's figures, it is also monster fun.


The game in question

Me and my friend found this at a thrift store months back, and I just remembered it. He bought it, and when we got back to his house we gave it a go. Quite a surprise.

The game, while generally based on luck, has a tactical component to it that really makes it appealing. The rules of the game are pretty simple. You set up tons of marble pellets across the board and choose a pac-man. Each pac-man starts at their own color base, and there are up to four players. A player rolls two dice to determine their move. Now, one dice determines how many times you can move pac-man, but the second dice determines how many spaces you get to move the 2 ghost in the center of the board. The ghost are the nasty strategical part of the game. When a ghost runs into a pac-man, the pac-man who was eaten must give two of their collected pellets to whoever controlled the ghost and move back to their color-coded starting base. However, across the square shape in the middle of the board are 4 yellow power pellets. When you pass a power pellet and a ghost in the same roll, the ghost is sent back to the center of the board, and that player may take 2 pellets from any other player they choose. With this system, you can literally come back from having almost no pellets if you play smart and roll good. I f'n love this game.

The other great part about it is just the board itself. The pac-men are kind of lame in looks, but they far make up for it by the system which you collect the pellets. The pac-men have holes in their mouth, and you push them onto the pellet, push down, and the swallow the pellet into their barrel like backs. The ghost are cool simply because it's always awesome to have some Pac-Man ghost around for those tough times.

I'd take some pictures of the actual thing if I had it. Like I said, I was at the thrift store with my friend, and he bought it. However, I DO have another Pac-Man game, though I've never played it.


The Pac-Man card game I own... probably not as good as the board game.

I bought this card game at the very same thrift store a few months before we got the board game. I was complete, and 99¢, so I couldn't pass it up. as I stated, I've never played it, and until I just opened it now I thought the instructions where missing, but the are actually printed under the lid.


The game comes with 4 of these boards, making me assume it's up to 4 player.


It also has the main card component. I really like the cards. I carry one of the Pac-Man +s and Ghost -s in my wallet to rate situations when they come up and look like an asshole doing it. If anyone is interested I'll look up the rules for this one, but it couldn't beat the simple joy of the board game.

So, basically, if you are ever at a garage sale or a antique mall and see this for something less then $20, I'd pick it up, get together some friends, and party like its 1982!

Cheers!