The Next Pac-Man Game Celebrates The Level 256 Glitch Of The 35-Year-Old Arcade Original

To celebrate the 35th anniversary of Pac-Man, Bandai Namco has teamed up with Hipster Whale (the creator of mobile hit Crossy Road) for a new free to play Pac-Man game for mobile and tablet called Pac-Man 256.

The reason for the title “Pac-Man 256” is due to it prominently featuring the Level 256 glitch of the original arcade version of Pac-Man. If you didn’t know, upon getting to Level 256 in the original game, you’d hit a kill screen meaning that the whole game would glitch out and be rendered unplayable. Other arcade games such as Donkey Kong had kill screens similar to this.

The idea of Pac-Man 256, then, is that this glitch is chasing Pac-Man across an endless maze from an isometric perspective. You have to steer Pac-Man through the maze, eating dots and dodging ghosts, all as fast as possible so as to not be consumed by the glitch. There will also be power-ups to be collected in typical power pellet form.

Pac-Man 256 will be coming out this summer and, as said, it will be free to download.