Bandai Namco Taps Cartuna For New 2D Pac-Man Series On YouTube

Brooklyn-based studio Cartuna has animated Pac-Man: Snack Breaks, a new short-form animated series that will debut on May 22 on the official Pac-Man YouTube channel, with fresh episodes landing monthly thereafter.

Bandai Namco unveiled the project this week alongside a teaser trailer as part of a larger marketing push the company is calling Pac-May.

Directed by Noah Pardo, the shorts ship Pac-Man out of his familiar Pac-Village and into New Pac-City, a neon sprawl delivered in a punchy, retro-flavored 2D style in the trailer. The series leans into high-energy comedy and worldbuilding rather than the franchise’s maze-chase formula, with Pac-Man’s “boundless optimism” pitched as the through-line.

Producers on the upcoming episodes include Adam Belfer, James Belfer, Monica Mazel, Garrett Beltis, and Ben Bishop. Mike Cefalo voices both Pac-Man and Inky, with Mike Bodie, Rebecca Wang, and Lukas Arnold rounding out Team Ghost as Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde.

Cartuna has proved itself to be a studio worth watching, having carved out a niche turning legacy IP into bite-sized digital content, with previous shorts built around SpongeBob, Goofy, and Dora. The Pac-Man assignment slots neatly into that wheelhouse, and the monthly cadence suggests Bandai Namco is aiming for a steady algorithmic presence favored by the indie scene, rather than a Netflix-style binge drop.

Cartuna is also one of the coolest indie distributors in the country right now, having recently handled titles such as Latvia’s Oscar submission Dog of God, Julian Glander’s CG gem Boys Go to Jupiter, and K. and Kuno’s kawaii-spoofing cyberpunk Cat-Noir sequel Tamala 2030.

It also marks the franchise’s most prominent original-animation push since the Hanna-Barbera Saturday-morning era, aside from Amazon’s off-kilter Secret Level anthology appearance last year.