Sometimes I think that I like things a normal amount, when I like them a completely crazy amount or that I should, in all seriousness, hesitate to broadcast openly. The last time this happened I was like "obviously, I like Transformers like any normal person who came of age in the particular context I arose in" but that's not true at all. I want to open my ribcage and find there the Matrix of Leadership, which I will use to imbue machines with sentience - with the vibration of sacred life.

I thought I liked Pac-Man a normal amount also, but that isn't true either. I know a lot of objectively weird shit about it and once I gasped and covered my mouth when I saw a Baby Pac-Man machine at Taco Time. Have you ever seen one?! It has a fucking pinball machine in it!!!

I should have understood that it was more than raw nostalgia when Pac-Man Championship Edition came out. It was when I was trying to explain Championship Edition to Brenna last night that I realized, "Oh. I sound like I'm trying to get her into Scientology." My instinct now, one I am only barely holding at bay, is to relate a bunch of facts to you about its manufacture. One of these facts is incredibly interesting. I have to content myself with providing a link above, saying, "If they really want to click it, they will. But some people long to LIVE IN DARKNESS and we CANNOT HELP THEM."

Lots of skills in games are cross-applicable. The skills that Pac-Man demands are sequestered in a kind of mechanical cul-de-sac - I'm obsessed with the idea of lineage in games, and outside of a few creatures of that time like K.C. Munchkin(!) or Lady Bug or… I'm not gonna do all this. But the things it asks you to do aren't things you're often asked to do these days, similar to Rocket Jumping let's say, so there's this pronounced generational gulf that exists. It's an opportunity to startle young people, to make them wonder: is there a spry fellow within this woody, desiccated man that lives in my house for some reason? There is not. But I can pretend to eat a very specific type of electronic food and sometimes a ghost in a haunted sepulcher.

Chomp Champs, unlike PAC-MAN 99's version of a Battle Royale, lets you cross into other people's mazes and eat their fucking power pellets and shit. It's the most malevolent thing I can imagine doing in a game, and I used to play a game where if you snuck up on someone you could chainsaw them in fucking half, starting with their asshole.

I would say that the game is kinda janky, laggy, and it makes my machine work as hard as Helldivers 2 for some reason. It's also very confusing to eat a power pellet and then go to an enemy maze, where your power pellet doesn't mean shit - these other ghosts don't care about your foreign pellets at all. Making it multiplayer like this has a couple weird edge cases. But it is an opportunity to brandish an ancient martial art, which is kind of a rare treat.

(CW)TB out.