After the massive success of Pac-Man in 1980, arcades were littered with many different "clone" titles in the following years, but it wasn't until 1988 when Taito released the similar, yet very different Raimais. At its core, Raimais is a game where you control Pac-Man Rika Midorikawa through top-down mazes while collecting dots energy plates and avoiding ghosts sci-fi inspired enemies. And while the foundation is awfully similar to Namco's well-known classic, Taito throws a lot of new ideas at the wall with this one.

For starters, there's a story, though from what I've gathered online, it was mostly removed when it was released outside of Japan. It supposedly even has four different endings, depending on your performance. Even without its narrative in the international releases, the game has a more structured "level-by-level" progression, rather than the same levels repeated over and over like Pac-Man (well, until you reach the kill screen, I suppose).

Raimais boasts a large number of levels (125 according to my research), but you'll only see 32 of those in a single playthrough. The game features branching paths somewhat reminiscent of the Bust-A-Move / Puzzle Bobble games, also developed by Taito. When you finish a level, you'll see various exits open up and you're free to choose the one you want...which will determine what your next level will be. It's a neat idea that helps bolster the replay value quite a bit if you dig the gameplay.

Another large deviation from the Pac-Man formula is that you gain various power ups for slowing down your enemies, shielding you from attacks, etc. There are also some offense power ups so you can take the fight straight to your enemies. These power ups help add variety to the levels and some depth to the gameplay beyond collecting dots and dodging enemies.

Oh and um...one of the power ups warps you to a boss fight of sorts that morphs the game into a mini shoot 'em up level. It was an abrupt and unexpected shift the first time it happened, but another example of Raimais just kinda doing its own thing.

Overall, I thought Raimais was a merely okay game. It's an interesting twist on classic maze chase gameplay, but despite all of its ideas, it didn't really "wow" me, even when taken in the context of it being a 35 year old game. I thought the difficulty was incredibly high after the first few levels, but luckily I played it on Taito Legends 2 for PlayStation 2 and was able to credit feed my way to victory...otherwise I would've never stuck with it. My single playthrough lasted about 36 minutes and I couldn't help but feel I'd rather be playing the original Pac-Man most of the time. Technological improvements and fresh gameplay ideas are great, but sometimes it's just really hard to top a classic.

Played On: PlayStation 2 (Arcade Version)
Completion Date: 2/5/23
Time: 36 minutes
Rating: 5/10