Pac-Pix draws an April date

Pac-Pix, the Nintendo DS game that involves drawing your own Pac-Man to gobble up ghosts, has been given an April release estimate for the USA by publisher Namco.

Pac-Pix may have seemed more like a tech demo than anything else when we saw it at E3 last year, but Namco clearly feels it's evolved sufficiently to warrant a proper release - and we're keen to see where the idea's been taken.

The idea is that Pac-Man has been locked inside a book while attempting to thwart a mischievous wizard called Ghost Ink, who draws Ghosts in the air which then animate and start doing naughty things.

Now we're the ones wielding such a power, drawing Pac-Man on the touch screen and then drawing walls for him to bounce off so he can gobble up the ghosts. You'll be able to draw multiple Pac-Mans (Pac-Men, surely, Namco?), Pac-Mans of varying size, and there'll be hidden items to collect and things like arrows and bombs of which to take some degree of advantage.

For those of you interested in getting caught in a loop, Namco encourages people to go to its website at www.namco.com for more details, except the only detail on the game that we can find there is the press release, which encourages people to go to www.namco.com for more details, except the only detail on the game that we can find there is [--there were literally pages of this -Ed].

We'll let you know what we make of Pac-Pix as soon as we make something of it. Munch on some screenshots in the meantime.