Pac-Man Battle Royale is an arcade game

Arcade game

An arcade game is a coin-operated entertainment machine, usually installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars, and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, and merchandisers...

 in Pac-Man

Pac-Man

is an arcade game developed by Namco and licensed for distribution in the United States by Midway, first released in Japan on May 22, 1980. Immensely popular from its original release to the present day, Pac-Man is considered one of the classics of the medium, virtually synonymous with video games,...

's series. It is made as part of Pac-Man's 30th Anniversary. It is developed by Namco Bandai Games

Namco Bandai Games

is an arcade, mobile and home video game developer and publisher based in Japan which is the product of a merger between the video game development divisions of Bandai and Namco. Namco Bandai Games is a wholly owned subsidiary of Namco Bandai Holdings and specializes in production and sales of...

 and released in January 2011.

First appearances

Battle Royale was first displayed in the United States in a playable state at the 2010 Amusement Expo

Amusement Expo

Amusement Expo is an annual convention featuring and showcasing vendors, developers and businesses having to do with coin activated amusements such as video arcade machines, electro-mechanical games, ticket/redemption skill and chance games and jukeboxes. The show is held annually in March at the...

 show in Las Vegas

Las Vegas metropolitan area

The Las Vegas Valley is the heart of the Las Vegas-Paradise, NV MSA also known as the Las Vegas–Paradise–Henderson MSA which includes all of Clark County, Nevada, and is a metropolitan area in the southern part of the U.S. state of Nevada. The Valley is defined by the Las Vegas Valley landform, a ...

. in March 2010. It was then seen again at an after-party event during E3, where Namco America brought four cabinets for attendees to play. Namco also took the unusual step of throwing a party prior to the launch of the game at the Whiskey River Saloon in Madison, Wisconsin

Madison, Wisconsin

Madison is the capital of the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Dane County. It is also home to the University of Wisconsin–Madison....

. It was not seen in Japan until September 2010 at the JAMMA Amusement Machine Show, which is opposite of most major Namco arcade releases where they are shown off in Japan first and are later brought to the US.

Gameplay

Battle Royale features a one to four-player mode, with the Pac-Man character available in four different colours. In single player mode, a CPU controlled Pac-Man will attempt to eat the player. The game can be set anywhere between three and nine rounds and in each round the players must eat the other Pac-Men on the board (or allow them to be killed by the ghosts) to advance. The game shares similar graphics to that of Pac-Man Championship Edition

Pac-Man Championship Edition

is a 2007 video game in the Pac-Man series, developed by Namco Bandai Games. The game was designed by Tōru Iwatani, the creator of the classic original 1980 arcade game Pac-Man, and it was Iwatani's final game before his retirement...

.

Release

While the game was reported for a release in September 2010, it was delayed for unknown reasons until late November 2010. NAMCO America, Inc. officially announced the release of Pac-Man Battle Royale on January 21, 2011.

Unique to Namco's other modern arcade releases, they created a Facebook page to promote the game, registering locations where players can find the game.