Pac-Land

Controlling Pac-Man, the player is tasked with reaching the end of each level while avoiding enemies and other obstacles. Stages are known in-game as "trips" and are broken into four sections — the first three have Pac-Man running to return a lost fairy back to "Fairyland", and the last having Pac-Man return home to his family. Pressing either of the directional buttons will make Pac-Man walk in that direction, and repeatedly tapping either button will make him run. Pac-Man can also jump over pits and obstacles by pressing the jump button.

In each stage, Pac-Man will encounter the four ghosts from the original game — Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde — alongside a purple ghost named Sue, originally a replacement for Clyde in Ms. Pac-Man. Eating large flashing Power Pellets will cause the ghosts to turn blue for a short time, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for bonus points. The ghosts are often seen driving vehicles, such as airplanes, buses, cars, pogo-sticks and flying saucers, and will sometimes drop miniature ghost enemies from the air to try and hit Pac-Man. Other types of obstacles are also present in stages, such as water-spewing fire hydrants, springboards, falling logs, quicksand and geysers.

Pac-Land was programmed by Yoshihiro Kishimoto of Namco Development Division 1, who would later work on the Family Stadium franchise. After seeing the success of Hanna-Barbera's Pac-Man animated series, Namco asked Kishimoto to create an arcade game based on the show; Hanna-Barbera was not involved with the game's development beyond licensing elements related to the series. Kishimoto stated that the hardest part of development were Pac-Man's animations. Most arcade games in Japan at the time simply used two or three frames to convey movement, which he found unconvincing.

The team wanted the game's backgrounds to be vibrant and colorful, and to have the characters move smoothly to replicate the show's animation style. Pac-Man himself was given 24 different frame patterns, alongside several facial expressions and clothing swaps.

Pac-Land was a commercial success in arcades. In Japan, it entered the Game Machine arcade charts at number-two on the table arcade cabinet chart in September 1984. In North America, it was in the top 20 RePlay upright arcade game charts through November 1985. It ended the year as one of the top five highest-grossing arcade games of 1985 in the United States.

The game well received by critics for its colorful graphics, level structure, and challenge. Mike Roberts gave the arcade game a positive review in the May 1985 issue of Computer Gamer. He called it an "interesting game" where Pac-Man is an "animated character that moves along a horizontally scrolling landscape" while praising the "very colouful" graphics and stating it is "easy to play once you've got the hang of it."

Pac-Land is an important and influential game in the platform genre, paving the way for games such as Ghosts 'n Goblins, Alex Kidd, and Wonder Boy. Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani has since labeled it as his favorite Pac-Man sequel for its interesting concept and gameplay. He said Shigeru Miyamoto told him it had a profound influence on the creation of Super Mario Bros. Shigeru Miyamoto himself also says that Pac-Land had an influence on Super Mario Bros., but to a lesser extent, saying that while he was in Tokyo seeing Namco has developed a platforming game he decided that he should follow suit. The only feature of Pac-Land Miyamoto cites as a direct inspiration was the blue background of the game as opposed to the black ones he typically would put in his games.

Shortly after the game's release, Namco produced a board game adaptation for its Fantasy Board Game series, based on the player reaching the end of the board without losing the "fairy chip". A Japanese LCD handheld game was released in 1990. Many of Pac-Man's moves in the Super Smash Bros. series are directly based on Pac-Land, such as his fire hydrant attack.