I'll own up right now and admit it – I've never been a Pac-Man fan. If I had to give Pac-Man some credit, I'd say the only high point in his career to me was a guest-starring role on a Futurama episode where the world of videogames became our world. I'm also not a fan of the old arcade games ported to the Xbox 360's Live Arcade, and nothing being done for them to update them for the now. Sure, the nostalgia lasts a couple minutes, but not even a once treasured game can stand the test of time. With all of that said, here comes another Pac-Man game for the Xbox Live Arcade, and I'm surprised to say it's actually really fun.

Fundamentally, the mechanics behind Pac-Man: Championship Edition are the same as they've ever been. You play as Pac-Man, a yellow circle with a slit for a mouth, who runs around maze corridors chomping up yellow pellets. To impede your progress are a series of ghosts, who chase after you down corridors in hopes of catching you and doing you in until all your lives are gone. Luckily, to combat the ghosts, are larger super pellets, which when gobbled up give you the advantage, and allows you to now eat the ghosts up for a short time. Along the way you'll also find fruit scattered around, which goes to improving your high score total. It is here, however, where things cease being the same and start changing up, which ultimately make the game something that deserves to be played, rather than remembered as history in a videogame course.

Though in the past the Pac-Man franchise always followed this formula, it always contained itself to one singular maze. You'd have everything setup, you'd go through, and once all the pellets on that maze was eaten, you'd load up a new level and start the whole thing again. The biggest change with Championship Edition is that once you start a game, you never have another loading screen at all, because of instead loading up a map after all pellets are eat, you've now got a very cool, auto changing board, which twists upon itself, so that you are seemingly playing one never-ending maze rather than a whole bunch of half-sided mazes. The maze (left and right running this time around) is basically made up of two sides, and once all the pellets for one side are eaten, a fruit will appear on the other side. Once you've eaten the fruit, the opposite side of the board will then repopulate itself with pellets, and will also often change the maze up, so it is no longer a perfect mirror image of the side you are currently on. The constantly changing maze is the big draw for the game, and one of the reasons why the new Championship Edition works so well.

Although the past games were all about surviving the levels, now with each game having a set time limit of five or ten minutes, it now seems more like a race to get as many points as you can, rather than surviving. Though surviving usually nets you some Achievements, your High Score will probably be more concerned with how many ghosts you managed to eat in a string of combos. There are several different games now, though you won't have a clue really what they all are until you play them. While the maze changes happen in each game type, other factors change, such as the brightness of the maze, portions being hidden, or everything moving at a really quick breakneck speed. Though the formula remains the same, the little gameplay tweaks and changes manages to give you enough things new, so hopefully you'll find one type you really click with, and will find yourself coming back to that game type again and again.

Much like the gameplay, Championship Edition manages to keep the retro while yet updating it for the now. Like the gameplay, whereas we had the mazes still in place, they were now ever-changing. Though the graphics of Pac-Man and his fellow ghosts (as well as that of the pellets) are mainly still the same, the mazes are now bright, techno-color fluorescent tubes that block your path and lead you in new directions. These brightly colored tubes and the way they disappear and reappear new makes for a great new update visually. And much like the visuals, though the sound of Pac-Man eating stays the same, the music is now a much more techno club bass pounding, which keeps the action intense and your heart pumping as you swivel around turns as ghosts are closing in on you.

If you are a Pac-Man fan, you'll definitely want to pick this game up. Even if you aren't a Pac-Man fan, if you are anything like me (so help you) then you just might find yourself adventuring into a game with very low expectations, and walking away completely stunned at the new transformation of one of the forefathers of videogame history. Pac-Man, you might be an old timer in terms of age, but with the way your new game plays, you look a good ten years younger. Welcome back to videogames!

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