Anybody else mildly disappointed?

[Mario123311]

Just sort of an unpopular opinion thing. But I guess I'll say my big gripe: WHY THE HELL WAS PAC-MAN WORLD IGNORED?! I expected his arcade games to get the most representation but there is little to none from the games that made him relevant in the early 2000's. And while Pac's moveset is still fun to use, It just feels like Namco told them that they couldn't be creative like that. ((Namco themselves has been trying to erase the trilogy from continuity))

And probably what bugs me the most is just the fact that Palutena and Mega Man get all unique custom specials while Pac-Man ((and even Wario)) just get lame upgrades of their normal moves with different properties. Where's my Butt Bounce? Where's my Rev-Roll? I wanted to use those moves, dang nabbit...

 

[~ Valkyrie ~]

Just sort of an unpopular opinion thing. But I guess I'll say my big gripe: WHY THE HELL WAS PAC-MAN WORLD IGNORED?! I expected his arcade games to get the most representation but there is little to none from the games that made him relevant in the early 2000's. And while Pac's moveset is still fun to use, It just feels like Namco told them that they couldn't be creative like that. ((Namco themselves has been trying to erase the trilogy from continuity))

And probably what bugs me the most is just the fact that Palutena and Mega Man get all unique custom specials while Pac-Man ((and even Wario)) just get lame upgrades of their normal moves with different properties. Where's my Butt Bounce? Where's my Rev-Roll? I wanted to use those moves, dang nabbit...

He still does have some things from World-games snuck to his moveset though like Up-Air (Flip Kick from Pac-Man World 2) and Side B is pretty reminiscent of Pac-Dot Chain in 2 and 3.

My personal theory is that they wanted to push for Pac-Man's signature spirit from the classic era he's from with modifying up quirky but deep playstyle that takes time to get in as evidenced by most of Pac-Mains' experience, possibly analogue to his original masterpiece with it's "play it until you're beaten"-set-up - while trying to avoid moves that feel too similar to other 3rd Parties due some of them from World-games being TBH souped-up techniques known of these mascots, such as Mario (Yoshi?) with Butt Bounce and Sonic with Rev Roll. And even then, the World-games are bit on the obscure-ish side, so it might be also why they weren't emphasized on as much.

Mega and Palutena are also kind of exceptions though, because if to be honest, giving everyone plain unique moves would be too much hassle, especially with a 50+ character cast. (Hell, Palutena suffers hard due being reliant on better custom moves than the default ones she has to jump up a tier or two).

 

[Nu~]

What I'm salty about is how the fire hydrant got in over any pacman world techniques. A maximum of 12 people know what pac-land is. Butt bounce and a pacman world related stage would be a lot less obscure. Besides, even if butt bounce is similar to mario's ground pound, it's a lot more unique than the original in terms of functionality.

 

[mrrwalden]

Honestly, Pac-Man's moveset turned out way better than I was expecting and moreso than anything that I could have "made." Before the trailer I was expecting something like:

B - Pac-Dot Throw (from PMW1)
Side B - Rev Roll
Up B - Pac-Dot Chain thing
Down B - Butt Bounce

but the way it came together by the team was so much more unique and somehow felt more "Pac-Man" to me than taking a PMW-centric route would've been. But yeah, in general, I have no problems with his moveset aesthetically. I understand the complaints with it, but it's definitely not uncreative IMO

My main little nitpicks about Pac-Man in Smash come from representation in terms of the stage and music. I definitely was only expecting one stage from the series and I'm fine with that. I think Pac-Land is an OK stage to play on for silly matches and I like the nods to the original game, but I don't like the look of it. I understand that that's not exactly a new opinion lol, but something about it really looks so wrong compared to the original game. I digress though. Since they didn't touch up the Pac-Land stage, I think I would've rather had a Pac-Mania-based stage (somehow) in its place, since that kinda has a connection to Pac-Land anyway and they pulled music from it. It probably would've looked better.

Speaking of music, I also wish they got at least one more track from another Pac-Man game. Pac-Man Arrangement is my favorite Pac-Man game and there's fantastic music there (as well as in the World games of course), but if they wanted something less obscure and more recent they could've pulled something from Pac-Man Championship Edition. "Pac-Steps" is so great.

All in all, I'm very content with what's here (like, I still can't believe the ghosts got individual trophies with descriptions, that so cool to me lol), but looking back, it would've been nice to have just a little more. Mods though!

You know, somehow I said all this and still didn't directly answer the original question lol
I guess I am very slightly disappointed, but not necessarily by the lack of Pac-Man World rep specifically.