YouTube is hiding an excellent, official high-speedPac-Manmod in plain sight

The original Pac-Man is unquestionably a video game classic, well deserving of its position in the inaugural class of the Strong Museum of Play's World Video Game Hall of Fame. But playing the unmodified 1980 release these days can feel a little slow-paced and repetitive, given advancements in game design and taste in the intervening decades.

So when I noticed a game called Pac-Man Superfast sitting under a "YouTube Playables" heading on Google's popular video site the other day, my first thought was "Wait, how fast is 'superfast' exactly?" My second thought was, "Wait, what the heck is YouTube Playables?"

You'd be forgiven for not knowing about YouTube Playables. Few seemed to note its official announcement last year as a collection of free-to-play web games built for the web using standard rendering APIs. The seeming competitor to Netflix's mobile gaming offerings is still described in an official FAQ as "an experimental feature rolled out to select users in eligible countries/regions," which doesn't make this post-Stadia gaming effort seem like a huge priority for Google.

Perusing the list of nearly 200 YouTube Playable titles shows a handful of dated but venerable mobile gaming brands (Cut the Rope, Crossy Road) amid the kind of lowest common denominator knockoffs you'd expect to see cluttering the "free" section of a smartphone app store (3D Bowling, 2048 Fusion). But then there's Pac-Man Superfast, an officially licensed version of one of the best games of all time that seemingly launched last October to extremely little fanfare. Fandom suggests the spinoff was designed by RedFox Games, but the game doesn't even get a passing mention on the developer's website.

Going for speed

Weird origins aside, Pac-Man Superfast pretty much delivers what its name promises. While gameplay starts at an "Easy" speed that roughly matches the arcade original, the speed of both Pac-Man and the ghosts is slightly increased every few seconds (dying temporarily reduces the speed to a lower level). After a few minutes, you're advancing past the titular "Super Fast" speed to extreme reflex-testing speeds like Crazy, Insane, Maniac, and a final test that's ominously named "Doom."