Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures (SNES)

Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures is an "interactive cartoon" starring Namco's iconic mascot, Pac-Man. In this game, rather than controlling the hero himself, you influence his behavior by either shooting objects with a slingshot (including Pac-Man himself!) or telling him to look in a certain direction.

Debugging Feature
Pro Action Replay code ( in the Japanese version) will enable two hidden options on the title screen. Simply move the cursor past ))STEREO(( to select them (note that both options are blank).

Option 1
Unknown function. The game appears to start normally, but then crashes immediately after the intro scene ends. May reference debugging code that is no longer available.

Option 2
Used to access both an animation test (PAC TEST) and a sound test (SND TEST), both of which are completely different from the ones normally available via passwords.

PAC TEST


Press B or tap Start to access PAC TEST, where you can view all of Pac-Man's animations. The number next to Pac-Man indicates his current pose; press Left or Right to highlight a number, and then press Up or Down to change it (don't go past or the game will crash). You can also press L or R to change Pac-Man's face, which will then be displayed for all subsequent poses (leading to some hilarious results).

Pressing Select will change the on the right side to, as well as shuffle the dots in the hex grid around. What the dots actually represent is currently unknown.

SND TEST


Hold Start to access SND TEST, which is (oddly enough) a sound test. Press Up or Down to choose one of the five sets of numbers, and press Left or Right to change it. Press L or R to cycle the number next to SND TEST between 5, 7, and 8 (this seems to limit the number of available sound channels or something).

The available options are: Playing sound effects from this screen isn't possible, since the game plays sound effects by sending the value to port 0 before sending the sound effect number, and the available values in the sound test only range from  to.
 * DATA NO. - Selects which bank of sound data to load. Takes effect immediately.
 * P.0 to P.3</tt> - Correspond to SPC700 ports 0-3. Sending a value to port 0 will select a music track (press B to play). Note that most values will crash the SPC700.

Sending values directly to ports 1 through 3 doesn't do anything, since the game's sound driver only uses those ports to receive data when loading a new sound bank.

Unused Music
The opening of "Haste Makes Waste", the theme for the Mountain area, is unused in the final game. It can still be heard in the Sound Test however.

"Secret"
Enter the PAR code. This is a glitched Pac-Man's House, but in the Japanese version this is called "himitsu" or "secret", seemingly for no reason. In the English version it's just labelled Pac-Man's House again.

Debug Room
Enter the PAR code. It is a debug room taking place (appropriately?) in the Old Game Center. There are 13 targets. Shooting the target reticules will make Pac-Man do certain actions automatically. The Japanese version labels this room as "Renshuu", which is the same name as the tutorial.

Developer Credits
A list of developers' names can be found right at the beginning of the ROM: (C)NAMCO-STAFF- YUMISAKA KATO ONODA KITAMURA OKAMOTO WADA HANDA  SAKAKI TAJIMA SAITA KUMAGAI SAITOH TAKAYAMA

Namco Screen
In the Japanese version, the NAMCOT logo (Namco's old Japanese console publishing division) glows slightly, and a voice says "Presented by Namcot".

Intro
The whole Pac family looks a little different between versions. The international versions mostly just use heavier shading, though Ms. Pac-Man and Pac-Jr. (seemingly not Jr. Pac-Man) were altered a bit.

Tutorial
In the Japanese version, the Tutorial is labelled so. In the international version, the tutorial is simply called "Pac-Man's House".

Passwords
The password system uses different characters between versions. The international versions had the vowels removed, and the special passwords were also changed: