There are three different types of game boards to play—Tropical, Space, and Medieval—each with its own set of minigames. After selecting a board, players can also choose to play a short, medium, or long game, each having a different number of tiles that corresponded to the length's name. The object of the game is to get to the finish first. The game is played in rounds; each round begins with a four-player minigame, the results of which determine how many spaces each player moves forward on the board. Each tile on the board also has an effect. These include moving forward/going backward some number of steps, stealing/losing/gaining tokens, playing a single/two-player/free-for-all minigame, the ability to spend earned tokens, and a raffle game to earn redemption tickets with cherry, orange, or banana raffle tickets. When on a "store" tile, the player can spend tokens to move steps forward, move others backward, buy raffle tickets, multiply the amount of spaces moved next turn, or gamble to earn more tokens. The three spaces before the goal space are special raffle spaces. In addition to functioning as a raffle space for the first player that reaches them, a player must place a certain rank or better in a minigame in order to progress to the next space while on these tiles. If a player attains 1st place in a minigame while on the banana space, they advance to the goal space. Once a player has reached the end, the game is over and players will receive redemption tickets based on how far they got on the board. These can then be used to buy each minigame separately, which can be played in short tournaments outside the main game. Alternatively, once all minigames have been bought, the player can let the tickets tally up to see their overall high score.
Reception
Pac-Man Fever received mixed reviews. Matt Casamassina of IGN gave the GameCube version a 4.9/10 and the PlayStation 2 version a 4.5/10. While the sound was praised, the gameplay and graphics were criticized. Review aggregatorMetacritic gave the GameCube version a 54 out of 100, indicating "mixed or average reviews", while the PS2 version received a 47 out of 100, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Ryan Davis of GameSpot gave both versions of the game a 5.2/10, disliking the lack of variety in the minigames and the slow pace on the boards.
