Pacman Pinball Advance for the GBA is very bad

I’ve reviewed quite a few different pinball titles so far in my tenure on this site, and each time I remind the reader how much I adore the game of pinball. I love a well-done electronic version of it just as much as playing real pinball machines in arcades. I’ve played many different pinball video games with some being very good and some being very bad. Pacman Pinball Advance falls in between good and bad, thus making it a very mediocre pinball game. If it weren’t for the Pacman association, this game wouldn't be worth two stars.

In this game, you can play on four different tables, though it’s really just variations of the same two tables. The tables themselves have a decent layout with ramps, bumpers, and the type of contraptions you’d expect to see in a pinball game. Also, like a good pinball game, there are tons of things to unlock that require you to hit certain things in sequence. There’s also some mini-games that even include the original Pacman game. Trust me when I tell you it all sounds better than it really is.

For a pinball game to be good, it has to be realistic. If the physics of the game don’t match real world play, then it won’t work. This game does not work. The biggest unforgivable offense in gameplay is the lack of consistency with flipper performance. Sometimes you will hit the flipper and the ball will go flying across the board and other times the ball will barely make it high enough to hit anything. One thing I like to do is press and hold the flipper button to make a little hook to catch the ball, then I lower the flipper and hit it again as the ball rolls toward the tip. This should help it get the most power out of the hit, but it doesn’t always work. I think the flipper problems with this game make it unplayable.

Because the flippers don’t work the same every time, it makes the shots impossible to place with any precision. This turns the game into a random button masher instead of skill-based experience. With the really good pinball games, you can get a feel for where the ball needs to be when you hit it, but you can’t do that with this one. This makes all of the puzzles and sequence shots nearly impossible to perfect. There’s also a third smaller flipper on the middle side of the screen, but you’ll be lucky if you use it more than once during any game because it’s so impossible to get the ball near it.

The graphics for the tables look pretty good, but there’s a problem with how the screen moves. The tables are about double the size of the screen, so your viewing area scrolls up and down. This should not have been a problem since most pinball games do this, but most pinball games keep the screen centered on the vertical location of the ball. In this game, the screen movement seems to lag behind the ball. Sometimes when the ball goes flying toward the bottom of the screen, the screen doesn’t catch up in time enough to react before it goes into the gutter. Combine that with weak flippers and you’ll lose a lot of balls.

I did actually like the sound effects and music in this game because they were taken directly from the original Pacman series of games. That little dash of nostalgia is what draws players to these modern games based on classics. It’s unfortunate that the sound is the only redeeming factor of a pinball game based on Pacman.

Before taking a long road trip a couple weeks ago, I found this game in the discount rack of Circuit City for $14.99. Even at that price, it isn’t worth the money.