“Namco was one of four companies outside of Apple picked to inaugurate Apple’s premium iPod games service—games you can buy from the iTunes store for $4.99 a pop. It’s nice to have such a beloved classic on the iPod, though the game itself doesn’t succeed quite as well as I had hoped it would,” Peter Cohen writes for Playlist.
“What’s of key difference in this version of Pac-Mac is the control—instead of using a joystick, like in the arcades, you’re using a virtual joystick, if you will, by gently touching the cardinal directions of the click wheel. You don’t need to actually press the buttons—moving your thumb over the Menu, play/pause, rewind, and fast forward keys is enough to get the on-screen joystick to respond. It takes a little getting used to, and it’s more difficult than it should be—Pac-Man really requires lightning reflexes, and the iPod’s click wheel just doesn’t feel that precise,” Cohen writes.
Cohen awards Pac-Man for iPod 2.5 out of 5 stars in his full review here.