Namco-Bandai celebrated Pac-Man’s 30th anniversary at E3 in June 2010 with a peak at Pac-Man Battle Royale, a 4-player death match meets 1980 classic due to be released later in September or October. The goal is simple… be the last player standing each round.

The play-field starts off very plain and simply, and gets populated with dots and power-ups as players eat dots and fruit bonuses. As players continue eating, the maze can change shape, and location of dots and power-ups can move and suddenly appear. Any player that eats a power pellet temporarily doubles in size and gains some speed over a normal sized Pac-Man, allowing it to overtake any regular size player (or ghost) that is unfortunate to be nearby. A player eaten by another (powered-up) player or ghost sits out the remainder of the round.

Any two players of the same size (normal or powered-up) that hit each other very quickly bounce back several inches, which rarely affects players equally except at the beginning of a round.

Apparently a recent add-on is a thin, subtle line that runs from the edge of the screen nearest a player’s controllers and the Pac-Man they control. It’s a nice and non-obtrusive touch to help keep things straight when there is multiple Pac-Man on the screen at a time (even though each is displayed in a different color).

This game has currently been shown on free-play with 3 and 5 round games. Between each rounds, players can splatter paint on a winner’s Pac-Man by hitting a button. It has been seen in both a smaller cocktail and larger walk-up version. The larger version has been seen with both an earlier Pac-Man shaped marquee hanging over the game, and a newer more elegant one pictured at the top of this page.