Pac-Jump
Pac-Man using Pac-Jump in Ultimate.
User	Pac-Man
Universe	Pac-Man Mappy

Pac-Jump (パックンジャンプ, Pac'n Jump) is Pac-Man's up special move.

Overview

Pac-Man turns into his ball form and summons a blue trampoline that stays in mid-air. The trampoline can be bounced on by anyone two more times, with each subsequent bounce launching characters higher than the last, but a third time causes it to break and the user to become helpless. Should anybody other than the user jump off of the trampoline, their jump will be refreshed, had they already used it. The trampoline will also change color based on the number of bounces it has left (from blue, to yellow, then to red).

The move can also be used offensively: once Pac-Man bounces off the trampoline, he will begin to chomp, causing 5-8% of damage to anyone he touches until his jump reaches its peak. While the chomps do minimal damage and knockback, the move is a useful out of shield option, since the trampoline is spawned on frame 1, and instantly forces grounded opponents to jump (and thus technically makes the chomp unblockable against grounded enemies).

The red trampoline's breaking effect is the only way for 14 characters to enter helplessness. Those characters are Yoshi, Jigglypuff, Mr. Game & Watch, Snake, Ivysaur (in Ultimate), Sonic, R.O.B., Mega Man, Bowser Jr., Bayonetta, Banjo & Kazooie, Byleth, Min Min and Kazuya. This makes it so that characters who did not have a helpless state in the previous game gain one, and by extension, makes Smash 4 and Ultimate the second and third iterations in the series to have helplessness for every character, the first being Melee when characters air dodged.

In Ultimate, the trampoline can be attacked by other players, although it cannot be attacked by the user. Based on the current color and the power of the attack, the trampoline will become yellow, red, or disappear altogether. The trampoline is also spawned at frame 10, making the chomp blockable.

Instructional quotes

case foldout		Attack while bouncing on a trampoline.
Move List		Bounces high into the air with a trampoline that sticks around for a little while.

Glitches

No collision glitch (1.0.8 - 1.0.9)

In versions 1.0.8 and 1.0.9 of SSB4, a glitch exists where a character can be dropped through solid ground by the trampoline. This occurs if Pac-Man creates a new trampoline while someone else is in the process of landing on an existing one that is very close to a floor, which causes the victim to temporarily not collide with the stage and simply fall through it. Victims of the glitch are almost certain to be KO'd, as they find themselves effectively teleported under the stage and unable to escape. This glitch was fixed in version 1.1.0.

"Helpless" glitch

In SSB4, if Pac-Man obtains a Super Mushroom or Poison Mushroom while using Pac-Jump, Pac-Man will quickly perform his respective "grow" or "shrink" animation, but will immediately return to his helpless animation while still moving normally. This helpless animation is completely aesthetic, and the player can cancel it with any attack or dodge.

Pass through glitch

In Ultimate, certain characters (such as Mr. Game & Watch and Pichu) can fall through the trampoline if they are small, Pac-Man was big when the trampoline was made, time is slowed, or a combination of those effects.

Poltergust glitch

In Ultimate, if the trampoline is sucked up by Luigi's Final Smash, its ability to be bounced off of will be disabled for the rest of the match.^[1] Aside from the initial jump Pac-Man gets from activating the move, any attempts to bounce on the trampoline will just result in falling through it as if it weren't there, though it can still be attacked and destroyed. Being KO'd will not end the glitch, neither will resetting the training session in Training Mode.

Customization

Special Move customization was added in Super Smash Bros. 4. These are the variations:

1. Pac-Jump	2. Power Pac-Jump	3. Meteor Trampoline
"Bounce high into the air with a trampoline that sticks around for a little while." "Bounces you high into the air with a trampoline. It sticks around for a couple more bounces, too."	"Summon a trampoline that bounces you higher than usual but doesn't stick around." "Summons a trampoline that bounces you even higher than usual, but doesn't stick around."	"Bounces you less high. When it's red, it has a meteor effect and can bury whoever jumps on it." "Doesn't bounce you as high. When it's red, it has a meteor effect and can bury whoever jumps on it."

1. Pac-Jump: Default.
2. Power Pac-Jump: The move sends Pac-Man high into the air with one large spring upward. However, the trampoline immediately disappears. Anyone above Pac-Man will be chomped on consecutively, trapping them and hurting them by 9% if the whole attack connects. More landing lag and less horizontal movement.
3. Meteor Trampoline: The jumps off the trampoline are slightly less than the standard variation's initial bounce, and lessens every time a character bounces off the trampoline, severely hindering Pac-Man's vertical recovery. When a character touches Pac-Man when he chomps, they will be damaged 3%, and the damage lessens with every bounce. Each time a character bounces on the trampoline, there is a weak meteor hitbox directly below it. The trampoline will meteor smash the player who touches it when it is red. If the trampoline is on the stage floor, it will bury the opponent rather than meteor smash them. If a player gets meteored by the red trampoline with another player standing on-stage below the trampoline, the grounded opponent will be buried.

• 

  Power Pac-Jump in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS.
• 

  Meteor Trampoline in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS.

Origin

Mappy using trampolines in the bonus round of Mappy.

The trampoline is a reference to the 1983 Namco arcade game Mappy. In the game, there are several trampolines that start the game colored green. Every time they are bounced on by Mappy, they change color to blue, yellow, and red; though enemies can bounce indefinetly. Mappy, Goro, or the Meowkies will all jump in a straight line when doing so, and are completely invincible to everything except the beams from microwave doors. If bounced on when red, the trampoline breaks apart, killing Mappy in the main game and causing a bonus round to end prematurely, unless another trampoline is below the broken one. The trampoline in Pac-Jump goes through these colors in the same order, but starts out blue since Pac-Man immediately bounces on it once it appears.

Unlike its depiction in Smash, where the height gets progressively higher with each jump, the trampolines in Mappy can always launch the player as high as they wish in the main game, leaving it up to them to decide what floor to land on. In the bonus rounds, the player must hop off of trampolines to pop balloons - when a balloon is popped, Mappy will be forced downwards and will have to hop on the same trampoline again to catch any balloons above the one he just popped. An advanced strategy required to clear bonus rounds in time involves Mappy hopping directly into a wall to break a trampoline faster.

Pac-Man games in the modern era have very strongly implemented elements and characters from games such as Galaxian, Dig Dug, and Mappy. While Mappy was not originally envisioned as part of the Pac-Man universe, or even as part of a video game, originally being created as a maze-solving robot, he has made some appearances in Pac-Man titles and is considered a part of the Pac-Man universe, having appeared as a PlayStation Portable exclusive playable character in Pac-Man World Rally, a parking attendant in Pac-Man E1 Grand Prix, and a sports stadium security guard in Pac-Man: Snack Breaks. The game is also noted for possessing gameplay similarities to Pac-Man as a chase game. Mappy was intended to be one of the rescuable friends in Pac-Man World, but replaced alongside other Namco crossover characters with the Pac-Man family, leaving only Pooka intact. A type of trampoline called the B-Doing is featured prominently in the Pac-Man World series, and serves as the namesake for the 6th level of Pac-Man World 2, B-Doing Woods, but the B-Doing has nothing in common with the Mappy trampoline in either form or function beyond the shared concept of a trampoline.

The Japanese name of the move is based on Pac'N-Jump, a Doodle Jump-like mobile game released in 2011. Levels were based on classic Namco games, including Pac-Man, Galaga, Dig Dug, Rally-X and Mappy. Paid DLC levels included stages based on Xevious, The Tower of Druaga, and Pac-Land. The game has since been removed from mobile stores.

Gallery

• 

  Pac-Jump in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U.
• 

  Pac-Jump as shown by the Move List in Ultimate.

Names in other languages

Language	Name
Japanese	パックンジャンプ, Pac'n Jump
English	Pac-Jump
French	Pac-saut
German	Pac-Sprung
Spanish	Pac-Salto
Italian	Pac-Salto
Chinese (Simplified)	吃豆跳跃
Chinese (Traditional)	吃豆跳躍
Korean	팩맨 점프, Pac-Man Jump
Dutch	Pac-sprong
Russian	Пэк-прыжок

Trivia

• Pac-Jump is the only move in Smash 4 and Ultimate that can put players other than the user in a helpless state.
• Pac-Jump is also the only move of Pac-Man's to originate in whole from a non-Pac-Man game.
  • Pac-Jump is also the only special move and one of five moves to originate from a series other than the user's, with the others being Mr. Game & Watch's two forward airs, which originate from Mario; Mr. Game & Watch's down air which originates from Donkey Kong; and Sonic's jab which originates from Virtua Fighter.^[2]
• To ensure Pac-Man gets a point for fighters who are KO'd by his trampoline rendering them helpless, there is a small windbox on the trampoline for a single frame during its breaking animation. This windbox deals almost no knockback (even less than Luigi's sourspotted Super Jump Punch), has no sound effect or graphical effect on hit, and cannot be blocked, making its existence practically invisible to the player. However, since it belongs to the Pac-Man who spawned in the trampoline, it triggers the game to consider Pac-Man to be the last player to hit the KO'd fighter (assuming they are not hit after breaking the trampoline), granting him the point.
• Fighters made helpless by Pac-Man's trampoline will always sustain 29 frames of landing lag upon landing. This is because this is the default crash landing lag used by the game if the duration is not specified by a parameter attached to a special move that causes helplessness. As such, fighters will usually sustain more or less landing lag when crash landing from the trampoline than from one of their own special moves, with the animations being sped up or slowed down accordingly.^[3]
  • Because of this, Pac-Man will have 1 less frame of landing lag when crash landing from another Pac-Man's trampoline than from his own.
  • The only exception to this rule is Mythra, who sustains 18 frames of landing lag instead. This is due to the developers applying a frame speed multiplier of 0.6× to her freefall landing animation via attack scripts, reducing its duration from the default 29 frames to 18 frames.
• It is possible for Pac-Jump to cause two players to become helpless simultaneously.^[4]
• In pre-release material for Ultimate, it was shown that attacking the trampoline would turn it green, and it would also put enemies into a helpless state when they jumped on it (regardless of the current level). Both of these changes were removed in the final game.

References

• Pac-Man
• Pac-Man (SSB4)
• Pac-Man (SSBU)
• Pac-Man universe
• Up special moves
• Bandai Namco