ARCADE GAME SERIES: PAC-MAN: 100% Achievements Guide + Cheese Methods

So wanna get all the achievements for Pac-Man? I got you covered. Most of the achievements are pretty simple with about 6 or so difficult achievements. I’ll go over a simple way to get those in this guide, so you can jump to that section if you’re just here for those.

Some setup you want to do before you start:

1. Go to Game Settings, you’ll only be able to access them from the Top Menu.

2. Turn on both Level Select and starting lives to 5. This will exclude you from the leaderboards but who cares, they don’t matter for the achievements.

At this point you’re good to go for most of the achievements, but there’s something else you’re gonna want to find for later, your AutoSave folder.

If you’re on Windows it will be in your AppData/Roaming/ArcadeGameSeries folder. You can easily get there by hitting the Windows + R or by searching for “Run” without quotations in Windows Search and searching for “AppData” (without quotes).

The folder path should look something like this on Windows 11/10.

This folder is important because later on we’ll be making a copy of a save that will essentially let you have infinite tries on any achievement (This also works for Arcade Game Series: Galaga and DigDug). We’ll come back to this later when we get to those achievements. On to the easy ones!

For the easy achievements, it should just be a quick matter of time getting them since you now have 5 lives and can start on any level. There’s two categories of easy achievements, Progression and Fruit, and one extra easy achievement for eating 4 ghosts with one power pellet.

Progression achievements are to complete Rounds 2, 5, 9, 13, and 17.

Fruit achievements require you picking up a Cherry, Strawberry, Orange, Apple, Melon, Galboss, Bell, and Key at least once. They can be found first on these rounds in this order: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13.

The last easy achievement is just eating all 4 ghosts with a single power pellet, you’ll probably earn this naturally.

Getting all of these can be either trial and error since you have 5 lives and infinite restarts at each level, or you can learn the 3 basic patterns. They only take a little practice and you’ll get consistently further by memorizing these. You can find them on this website:

https://www.classicgaming.cc/classics/pac-man/play-guide

The three patterns are for Round 1, Rounds 2 – 4, and Rounds 5+. You don’t even have to read the text and can practice by following the images on the guide. Remember that these will make clearing the levels much easier but they’re completely optional and you can just brute force them if you wish.

Now on to the last difficult achievements.

Now on to the last difficult achievements. They are as follows:

Om Nom Nom x2
Eat all four ghosts in succession twice in a single round!

Om Nom Nom x3
Eat all four ghosts in succession three times in a single round!

Om Nom Nom x4
Eat all four ghosts in succession four times in a single round!

Om Nom Nom
Eat 2 fruits and all four ghosts in succession four times in a single round!

Fruit Basket
Eat all 5 fruits (Cherry, Strawberry, Orange, Apple, Melon) in one playthrough!

Picky Eater
Clear 3 Rounds in a row without eating a single ghost and without losing a life!

I’ll tell you how to get all of these in 2 playthroughs:

Before doing anything go into your settings and set the game to windowed mode, it will make what we’re about to do much easier. Start a new game from Round 1. Before the “Ready!” symbol disappears, hit escape and hit “Save and Quit.” What this normally does is let you save your current progress once so you could close the game and pick up where you left off next time, and this is the key to letting us get these achievements easily.

Follow the instructions from the Setup section to find your save data folder (Win + R, search for AppData, go into the Roaming folder and ArcadeGameSeries folder, keep going through them until you find the PAC-MAN and AutoSave folder).

Look for a file called “file23.bin”. This is file is your current saved game, think of it like how an emulator can have a save state. Copy this file to somewhere convenient, like an empty folder, your desktop, downloads, etc, just anywhere you can find it easily. Keep that folder and your AutoSave folder open as we go forward.

Every time you start the game from the top menu/title screen, this file will be erased from the AutoSave folder and the game will pick up where you left off. If you make a mistake and want to load from your saved file, all you have to do is pause the game, hit “Return to Top Menu”, and once you’re on the title screen, paste in the file23.bin file you copied to another folder. After you do this just hit enter on the main menu and you’ll be right back where you left off!

Once you make progress just repeat the process. Save to create the file, copy file23.bin to another folder, and then just start from the title screen. Loading is as simple as returning to the title screen and pasting in file23.bin to your Autosave folder.

THE STRATEGY:

Playthrough 1 – Om nom nom achievements:

1. Start on Round 1. Focus on clearing out the dots while avoiding the ghosts and the power pellets. After you get enough dots the cherry will appear. You have to get this cherry or you must reset. If you die while the cherry is on screen it is lost and you’ve gotta reset. Once you get it you can save and copy and paste the file23.bin elsewhere to give you a checkpoint.

2. Continue to collect dots until you get the second cherry as well. Save your game, copy the file to another folder, and continue.

3. At this point you can stop focusing on the dots and just on the ghosts. You need to eat all 4 ghosts with all 4 power pellets each time. Try and juke the ghosts and bait them into a corner, it should be easy to get Blinky, Inky, and Pinky to corner you, but you’ve gotta get lucky with Clyde being close enough. If Clyde is close enough to you and the other ghosts then eat the power pellet and try and eat all of them. If you miss a ghost or die, then reset by copying your saved file23.bin into the AutoSave folder, then return to the Top Menu and continue.

4. Repeat this process, if you save and copy the file after getting all 4 ghosts with each pellet then you’ve got a checkpoint and nothing to worry about. It will just take some time and patience so don’t give up. After a few times of this you should be able to get all 4 ghosts with the fourth power pellet and you should have all of the Ghost Eating achievements! Congrats!!

Playthrough 2 – Picky Eater & Fruit Basket:

1. Start a new game on Round 1 once again. Create a save and copy the file to another folder.

2. Play through Rounds 1-3 while getting at least one of each fruit (cherry, strawberry, and orange) while not eating any ghosts and not dying. A good strategy is to save after getting a fruit and saving about half-way through each maze in case you die. If you eat a ghost, miss both fruits, or die, then you need to reset from your last save file.

3. Once you clear round 3 you earn the Picky Eater achievement and no longer need to worry about avoiding ghosts with power pellets. Good Job! From now on you just need to keep playing until you get an apple in either Round 5 or 6, and a Melon in Round 7. Just reset if you die and save after making a bit of progress periodically. Should be no problem clearing these rounds if you follow the patterns from the guide listed in the setup section of this guide. After grabbing the melon you should be at 100%!! Congratulations!

Let me know if you find out anything else I could put in this guide and let me know if you have any feedback! Thank you and happy achievement hunting!