Pac-Man World

Pac-Man World is a 3D platform video game. Controlling Pac-Man, the player must complete each of the game's six worlds to rescue his family and friends, who are held captive by the ghosts in their homeland of Ghost Island. Worlds consist of four levels each (except the Ruins world, which has three), which are completed by reaching the end of each level, sometimes requiring special doors and pathways to be opened along the way. The final level of each world has a boss that Pac-Man must defeat in order to progress.

At the beginning of the game, only three worlds are available, while the other three are unlocked by completing all prior worlds. g. the first world, Pirate, features ships, cannons, and beaches.

Pac-Man World began as a prototype platform game for the PlayStation, titled Pac-Man Ghost Zone, which was only shown at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 1997 and intended for released in the fall of that same year. Headed by Namco Hometek director Bill Anderson, the game followed a teenager being sucked into a Pac-Man arcade cabinet by the ghosts and their leader the Ghost Lord, and transforming into Pac-Man. The game was made to break the mold of previous Pac-Man games, such as having a grittier look. Namco's Japanese division put pressure on the project with strict guidelines — Anderson recalls being unable to use a 3D render of the character as a reference, requiring the team to make it themselves.

Development was assisted by designer Scott Rogers, with music composed by Tommy Tallarico. When the prototype was presented to Namco, they became unhappy with it and cancelled it for quality reasons, firing the entire development team aside from Rogers, an artist and a programmer. Namco also pushed the release date back to 1998 to allow the game to be reworked. The team decided to revamp the project with a new gameplay engine.

Pac-Man World was well received by critics for its gameplay, soundtrack, graphics and originality, holding an 81% score on aggregator website GameRankings though the GBA version held a score of 59.00%. By 2007, the game had sold over 1.24 million copies in North America alone. Worldwide, the game sold 1.5 million units.

GameSpot compared the game favorably to Namco's own Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, praising its colorful graphics, character animations and controls, concluding that it was "worthy of anyone's library". IGN had a similar response, liking the game's originality, graphics and soundtrack — they especially praised its gameplay for standing out among other platform games, with its puzzle solving and animation style.