Prime Video’s soon-to-premiere anthology series “Secret Level” will feature episodes based on various video game franchises; some modern, some retro. (“Mega Man” definitely fits into that retro category but it’s seemingly staying pretty true to its roots, based on this teaser.) But now we’ve got a teaser for another retro game that is definitely going in a unique direction.
Pac-Man!
What do you think of when you hear the name Pac-Man? Probably a bunch of dots, a maze, and a yellow disc creature that opens and closes its mouth while being chased by ghosts. Well, that’s uh, not exactly what we’re getting with this adaptation. Instead we’re getting what looks like, scrawny Doctor Doom? Maybe? And what’s he doing? He’s in some kind of a wasteland filled with monstrosities that seem like they were pulled from that movie, “After Earth.” But instead of Jaden Smith we get…this guy, thing, person?
Now, to be fair, Pac-Man wouldn’t be the easiest thing to adapt into a dramatic story but it did have its own fairly successful cartoon in the ’80s. But that was a kid’s cartoon and was all happy and zany. This time around though we don’t have anything that remotely resembles Pac-Man. All we get is a voiceover where the main character asks what their purpose is. The response is a voice saying, “Eat, or be eaten.” Which, you know what, that is kind of the point of Pac-Man… to a degree. You do get to eat the ghosts but they don’t actually eat you as a countermeasure.
This kind of feels like what happened when “Super Mario Bros.” got turned into a movie. The first one. The one where Dennis Hopper played a version of King Koopa that evolved into a human and ruled over Dinohattan. There were little hints of Mario stuff in there, just like this has a golden orb that looks like maybe this is Pac-Man or something. There’s no way of knowing if this is a good or a bad thing. There’s no real way to know for sure until we get to see the finished project.
The series hits Prime Video December 10th. Check out the teaser now-
