This reminds me of a lesser known and underrated game on the GameCube, Pac-Man Vs. [1]

It worked by having one player operate use a GameBoy Advance (connected to the GameCube with an adapter) to (privately) operate Pac-Man while the other three players use GameCube controllers to operate ghosts.

Additionally, to give Pac-Man a better shot at winning, the three ghosts play from a third-person 3D perspective, rather than top-down.

It was a great couch 3v1 game.

The WiiU had similar mini-games in Nintendo Land [2], with one player operating the Wii U gamepad, while the others played from the TV.

I miss the era of couch multiplayer games.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man_Vs.

EDIT: ^HN strips the necessary period (.) from the end of the link.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Land