How to play PACMAN in terminal?

If you want a pure console version (something you could play over SSH, for example), try pacman4console (sudo apt-get install pacman4console). It's pretty ugly but it works.

But I don't think it's the best. I personally prefer pacman (sudo apt-get install pacman), mostly because it looks like the original Pacman game... But it's graphical. I don't understand why that's neccessarily a bad thing so I'm including it.

There are a couple of other graphical clones in the (njam which has multiplayer, and hannah) and there are several as part of compilations (gtkboard and childsplay both have Pacman clones).

There is one called myman you can download from Sourceforge and you have to compile it from source. It hasn't been updated since 2009 but it still works.

First, install the dependencies:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install libncurses5-dev groff build-essential

Next, extract the files and cd into the extracted directory:

tar xvfvz myman-wip-2009-10-30.tar.gz
cd myman-wip-2009-10-30

Finally, compile, install, and run:

_{NOTE: if you don't want to install system wide, do not run sudo make install and see the instructions below instead}

./configure
make
sudo make install
myman

If you do not want to install system wide, you can use these instructions instead:

./configure
make
mkdir ~/bin
cp myman ~/bin
. ~/.profile
myman

Of course, the myman command runs the game.

Also, it runs on ncurses so if you have trouble rendering over ssh, run screen or tmux before you run the myman command.

HELPFUL OPTIONS:

-2 - wide screen

-b - enable sounds

-o - use 'o' for power pellets and bullet for dots