You Can Now Play Pac-Man In Your Van

Have you ever found yourself on a break from bricklaying, delivering parcels or removals and thought “I really wish I could play Pac-Man on the infotainment screen of my van”? Well, in that incredibly niche case, today is a great day for you.

Volkswagen has just released an update for most of its current commercial vehicles – namely the ID Buzz, Caddy, Multivan, California and Crafter – to include the AirConsole in-car gaming platform. That means there are 15 video games you can play through the dashboard of your van, with your phone acting as a controller.

More specifically, it’s 15 games from developers N-Dream and Bandai Namco – most notably with the inclusion of Pac-Man Championship Edition, if our intro didn’t give that bit away.

There is a racing game, though not Ridge Racer like we had really hoped to read about. Rather, you’ll get GoKartGo! Air, as well as Ludo, Tumblestone, Trivia Crack, Golazo, FriendsWork and err, fARTwork. Not our capitalisation, we feel obliged to point out

You won’t have to pay any extra for it, and Volkswagen has said more games will be coming in future. There’s still some hope for a Ridge Racer Type 4 port, then, or maybe even the lesser-known Namco-published Wangan Midnight series. We’re probably hoping too much.

Oh, and don’t feel like your co-workers have to miss out either. Up to eight players can connect, although we suspect that might start to feel a little bit crowded if you’re all clamouring into the front of a Crafter’s cab…

As for VW’s road cars, you’ll already find AirConsole already in most of them, and it should be subject to the same future updates as the commercial vehicles.

Still, given the choice, it doesn’t quite beat playing Mario Kart 8 in the back of a Lexus LM. Ask us how we know.