You know, when everyone started making casual games, there was this great naïve belief that we could just go back into the vaults of Zaxxon, Centipede, and Pac Man and bring all of the classics out with some new gameplay, and people would just eat them up. Well, yes and no. While you can certainly find some traces of the classic retro games in the casual hits of today (Luxor isn’t that far off Centipede, and there are no shortage of Space Invader games in a different theme), the gaming audience has grown up, and they are looking for something new and original.

But Iggle Pop was something more than that. The basic gameplay is unabashedly Pac Man – right down to having the player chased by ghosts. But instead of stationary pellets to pick up, the player is collecting “Iggles” – furry little moppets of cuteness that exist purely for the purposes of saving. And instead of eating them, you will form a big long train of them that grows as you get more and more of them to follow you. Your goal is to bring them to their houses before the ghosts get them – or you.

It sounds really simple – and it is – but it is also a great little time waster. Even after the world has moved on to $750K casual masterpieces like Bookworm Adventures, I still haven’t taken this little jewel of a game off my hard drive, and find myself pulling it out a lot more than I’d like to admit. It somehow captures all of the simple joy of Pac Man, but adds just enough to make it something else… and it’s addictive as all get up.

Though it shows all of the hallmarks of an early generation casual game like keyboard control based design (they have since added mouse controls, but they are clearly less cool), the game is a solid block of fun, and really deserves having someone go back and look at bringing it up to date. Hint, hint, Popcap. Go check it out and see why.

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