We had mixed feelings about the iOS retro revival game Pac-Man 256 when reviewing it this week, reckoning it to be overly similar in gameplay to the dated original Pac-Man game from 1980. However, the power of nostalgia clearly shouldn’t be underestimated, as it turns out that Pac-Man 256 has been downloaded five million times in its first week of availability.
Matt Hall, the founder of the game’s developer, Hipster Whale, broke the news on his Twitter page. The 5 million figure presumably includes downloads of both the iOS and Android versions of the game, which were both released as freemium titles on 19 August. Another good reason for Hall to be pleased is that it was two weeks before Crossy Road, the studio’s previous successful mobile game, reached the same number of downloads.
https://twitter.com/KlickTock/status/637413317158432768
Hall revealed that particular statistic in an interview with VentureBeat last week. In that interview, he also admitted, in an unfavorable comparison of the game to Crossy Road, that Pac-Man 256 “won’t appeal to everyone”, though he said that the development team has still “made a game that anyone who has played Pac-Man will feel the nostalgia for.” This cautiousness suggests that Hall must be very pleasantly surprised by the popularity of Pac-Man 256 so far.
