Journalists and industry veterans who patrolled the halls at this year’s E3 were treated to a unique gaming experience unlike any other when they reached the Namco booth. Amidst all of their modern offerings lay a cocktail table experience straight out of 1982 – only the game featured on this table was entirely 2010. Pac-Man Battle Royale is a new four person party version of Pac-Man in which each player tries to eat their competition …but is it coming to the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch?
Journalists and industry veterans who patrolled the halls at this year’s E3 were treated to a unique gaming experience unlike any other when they reached the Namco booth. Amidst all of their modern offerings lay a cocktail table experience straight out of 1982 – only the game featured on this table was entirely 2010. Pac-Man Battle Royale is a new four person party version of Pac-Man in which each player tries to eat their competition …but is it coming to the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch?
We reached out to Namco’s Reory Howard to get the details; “While the game’s still in development on the arcade side (the arcade we showed was a prototype), we’ve yet to be able to fully evaluate it for functionality on the Apple devices. That said, it’s been getting great coverage and response, especially with its showing at E3 and our PAC-MAN 30th Anniversary party. Jonathan Kromrey, General Manager of Apple Games at Namco Networks wants to bring it over to Apple, so we definitely have our eye on it!”
Reory was also kind enough to send us a brief summary detailing the game’s mechanics;
“Players compete against each other by eating power pellets. Eating a power pellet will increase the size of your Pac-Man. Once large, your Pac-Man can eat other ghosts as well as other players. Last Pac-Man standing wins the round. Same size “Pac-Men” large or small will bounce off of each other. This is useful because you can bounce opponents into large Pac-Men or ghosts to knock them out. Eating all the pellets in the maze will refresh the pellet board. The same thing happens when you eat a piece of fruit. As the game goes on, the speed of game increases.”
The possibilities on the iPad speak for themselves, and it also seems like Pac-Man Battle Royale would be a perfect match for Namco’s UniteSDK, a social network that launched earlier this year allowing cross-platform play between the iPhone, iPad, and PC’s. While it doesn’t look like there are any firm plans yet, it sounds like Namco isn’t ruling anything out.
