The world’s favourite playable puck, Pac-Man is headed to Fortnite! With the number of recent collaborations between Fortnite and other iconic titles in popular culture, the sneaky announcement that Pac-Man would join Fortnite wasn’t exactly a surprise, but it likely won’t be a carbon-copy of other collaboration campaigns.
With details so slim as to what the collaboration will actually look like, the most the internet can do at this stage is speculate. Here’s what we do know:
- Pac-Man is headed to Fortnite
- His arrival will launch in June
- The collaboration is a 42nd anniversary present for the lovable yellow puck
Unfortunately, Pac-Man and Fortnite feature such different game mechanics and playstyles, so it’s highly unlikely that he’ll be released as a skin, as in other collaborations like the recent Wu-Tang Clan crossover. The other glaring issue with porting Pac-Man directly into the game as a playable character is his size.
We’ve seen other modern explorations into retro game culture like Pixels that in the right circumstances Pac-Man can be a character in his own right in other media, but without reworking the entire game’s environment, hitboxes and character design, it wouldn’t be possible to have your favorite puck zooming around armed to the teeth with weapons of mass destruction.
The post on the official Pac-Man website states that ‘items with the “Pac-Man” motif’ will drop into Fortnite starting from Tuesday, and this seems to confirm that we won’t be getting a skin. Pac-Man would however make a really cool sticker and gun adornment in addition to the Pac-Man-themed merch drop we’re now expecting, but there’s no confirmation of anything other than ‘items with the Pac-Man motif’ at this stage.
Pac-Man celebrated 42 years of bringing action and excitement to gamers the world over yesterday. This is an incredible achievement and Pac-Man has become a retro popular culture reference and a reminder of a simpler time that is so far ingrained into the psyche of the modern gaming industry. While we don’t have any more details on what the collab will entail, we can hope that the Fortnite team will do Pac-Man proud with their merch.
In case you missed it, you’re once again able to play Fortnite on iOS! It seems a partnership with Microsoft is the way to go if you want to circumvent disputes with Apple.
