Yes, it does look like the previous screenshot.
Rounding up this month’s spectral collection is Pac-Man Championship Edition DX, if only because Phasmophobia has made me want to turn the tables on the undead for shaving actual years off my life. Does it hurt the ghosts when Pac-Man eats them? I hope so.
If nothing else, all this makes me feel better. And Championship Edition DX really is all about feel. It’s easy to look at the luminous screenshots and assume this is nothing more than a neon upgrade of a beloved classic. But it’s fast and endless and exhilarating, taking the grim inevitability of the original game away and replacing it with a perfect, dizzying loop of amphetamine enjoyment. It’s even fun in the moments where you’re the hunted, not the hunter—there are genuinely few things in games that feel as wonderful as rounding a corner at exactly the right moment to avoid the deathly touch of a ghostly pursuer. And where the original game offered you a brief and tantalizing taste of power via precious moments of invincibility that disappeared all too quickly, this version makes you feel like a lab-created apex predator, taking revenge on the scientists who created you. Chomping through a fat line of fleeing ghosts is like having a whole selection box to yourself. Somehow, every single enemy you munch is louder and better and more rewarding. It sounds like it should get repetitive: eat the dots, navigate the maze, wreak dark vengeance on your eternal enemies. But everything in this feels so incredible that time and space lose all meaning when you play. It’s rather amazing really.