PacPix is Namco's second Japanese DS release, and the first that isn't a port from another system. PacMan is to a lot of people the very icon of videogaming. Penny-Arcade's Gabe wears a yellow shirt with a PacMan silhouette on it - and few would fail to recognize the image. Namco created PacMan in 1980, and have been trying to build on the success of the original ever since. It's hard to build on simple perfection, and every subsequent game featuring PacMan has been either an overworked travesty or a completely different game using PacMan for name recognition.

Name recognition doesn't work so well with modern kids, most elementary schoolkids in Japan don't know about PacMan, but Namco - now fifty years old - still considers PacMan to be their mascot. So, in a roundabout way, that brings us to PacPix, a not-PacMan game featuring PacMan. It's a simple game, the basic premise involves drawing PacMan, bombs and arrows. Each level is basically a blank page upon which ghosts and other things wander and also upon which you draw things. Horrible things.

The game is pretty lenient when it comes to recognizing your PacMan and sending him on his way. Namco's programmers did a great job of making it easy to create PacMan, and even when you're rushed the game picks up on what you've done and animates it very well.

When you're drawing a PacMan under pressure things can get pretty ugly. But that's the fun part - drawing a hideous PacMan with a ridiculous overbite and vampire fang and watching him munch away is pretty hilarious. Naturally the funny wears off soon enough, but every once in a while I catch myself laughing out loud at the oblong PacBean I've created as it eats across the page.

The game is divided into books, each book has twelve parts (every second part has a boss at the end), and each part has five pages, often with two segments each. Each page starts with a limited number of pacmen, a time limit, and a set quantity of ghosts. Eat all the ghosts and advance to the next page. You can draw as many PacMan as you want, but each successful doodle decreases your stock. Having four PacMan zipping around the level will clear the ghosts out faster, but it's much harder to herd them where you need them.

Every page is divided into two halves, the top and bottom DS screen. On the top is a large score box, around which is a tunnel PacMan can go through to eat errant ghosts and powerups, and this tunnel is where you direct him when you need to get other things done. If PacMan leaves the screen it counts as a loss, so the tunnel acts as a kind of delay. It's not always easy getting him in there, often you have to direct him over a switch to unlock it first.

Above the tunnel you'll sometimes find ghosts in bubbles, switches, blocks and mirrors. You can't direct PacMan onto the top screen, so all the targets above the tunnell need to be attacked a different way, and this is where the second shape you can draw comes in. Arrows. Draw an arrow and it zings off, hitting switches and popping bubbles. Sometimes the target is behind a block, so you bounce the arrow off a mirror to hit the mark.

You can't draw on anything but blank paper, and here's where it gets tricky. Wandering ghosts, moving blocks, ink blots and scorch marks prevent you from drawing shapes where you want them when you need them, though the things you draw cannot be obliterated by the ghosts. A balance must often be struck between drawing a PacMan early and clearing out parts of the level so you can draw, and holding more PacMans in reserve until all the targets can be eaten.

Size matters. A larger PacMan can clear more of the screen, but it'll move a lot slower than a tiny one. It's also harder to draw a large one with so many obstacles running amok under your stylus.

In addition to arrows and PacMan himself, you can draw bombs. Big bombs, bombs of nearly any size. "It's fun!" he said with a maniacal laugh. A simple circle with a fuse is all you need for destruction. Except the fuse needs to run to a candle to light it, and you can't draw over anything to get reach it.

There are several kinds of ghosts. Slow moving pink ones are basically fodder, slow and easy to catch. Blue ones are irritating and dodge out of the way. White ones need to be stunned once before they can be eaten. Some of the ghosts are shielded and must be eaten from behind, some leave blots of ink on the page, and any of them can start the page encased in a block that must be destroyed before they can be eaten. Some ghosts are numbered and must be eaten in order, creating a very significant challenge for if you eat the wrong one they all return to life. A ghost life, as it were.

It gets complicated quickly with plenty of moving objects and not much space to draw. Even the smallest PacMan needs to span almost a quarter of the screen in order to be detailed enough for a mouth to set his direction. Release ghosts and the screen clutters, making it harder to draw PacMan to eat them so you can draw more things to release more ghosts so you can draw PacMan... You see how this works? It's damnably tricky at times. Making an arrow that'll launch in the right direction to bounce off a mirror to hit the switch to light the candle so you can draw a bomb to release the ghosts... Better warm up your drawin' arm, son, and practice lots.

A typical stage would have four encased ghosts circling a candle, which can be activated by bouncing an arrow off a mirror and hitting a switch on the top screen. It's hard to reliably draw an arrow that goes where you want it, especially when you've got to time your shot between rotating blocks. Light the candle and you have to draw a bomb with a fuse extending to the candle. Once you've drawn the bomb it can't be erased by wandering critters but it will fade away in a few seconds if not detonated. Draw the bomb, wait until the path is clear, and string a fuse to the candle. Hopefully you've blown open a block or two, but even if you don't you've made a scorch mark that can't be drawn over until it fades. A few missed bombs and a few freed ghosts in the way and you're completely out of space to draw. If you've got a PacMan already on the loose there's a good chance he's going straight off the page when you can't draw a wall to change his direction.

The stages start off pretty simple, but by the tenth part of book one it's mightily challenging. You might be surprised how hard it is to draw an arrow in a tiny space between moving objects when the clock's counting down.

The first boss has you simply drawing a big enough PacMan to eat him. Eat him once and he grows bigger. The last PacMan you draw needs to be very huge indeed, and there's a brief moment of panic as the boss zigs towards your drawing area, threatening to obliterate your handcrafted eating machine. Another boss swings from a string while coated in what seem to be bubbles. You must shoot the bubbles off him with hand-drawn arrows, which is a lot harder than it sounds.

It's... Interesting. Like a lot of DS software it's very much a short-term game, fun in tiny doses but without any really serious longevity. It really seems that Namco had a neat idea and stretched the living hell out of it to encompass an entire game. There's only three things you can draw, but to Namco's credit they made it work. The whole game is excellently executed. Longevity is always hard to predict, but PacPix doesn't strike me as a keeper. PacPix is a gimmick in search of a game, and while Namco's polished this gimmick better than I thought possible, I don't think it'll last.

That said however just thinking about it makes me want to try and beat that stupid level I can't pass... Maybe it's got some legs after all.

Lawrence.