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Pac-Man: Your Thoughts on the Pie Guy!
Pac-ManPac-Man fever! That's what I have now that I've started work on the Pac-Man chapter in the book I'm currently writing with Bill Loguidice, the acclaimed collector and game historian. :) As usual, I started off by reading the wikipedia entry on the game, which this time was actually extremely detailed and helpful. One interesting thing about the wikipedia article is that it claims that the game designer, Toru Iwatani, was not inspired by a pizza as the old story goes. The article cites a book called Programmers at Work: Interviews, which I unfortunately do not own. If anyone does have this book or has thoughts on this matter, please let me know!
As I see it, there are at least three reasons why Pac-Man is an important game. First, it got the whole mascot and game character thing really rolling. Some sources claim Pac-Man is even better known than Mario, even today! I mean, before that you had stuff like Space Invaders and Asteroids, but I can't think of any truly memorable characters in those games. Second, it was big on the licensed merchandise. Now, I remember having a tape and book based on the game Asteroids back in the early 1980s, but obviously no game before Pac-Man attracted nearly as much licensing deals. Thirdly, Pac-Man is interesting from a modding and legal perspective, since there was that business with Ms. Pac-Man, which began as an unauthorized but commercially available mod from a third party. Of course, many people think Ms. Pac-Man is superior, so that naturally aroused Namco's concern.
There are also other fun things to talk about here. One is the infamously bad Pac-Man game for the Atari 2600, which some claim caused or at least helped to cause (along with E.T.) the videogame crash. I don't buy that myself, but would be interested to know what you think. There are also the tons of clones, which range from things like K.C. Munchkin to a Commodore clone I played where the Pac-Man had been replaced with a Commodore logo. I don't remember the name of this game, though, and can't seem to find it online.
I am also aware of some of the better remakes, updates, and so on for the game, including the celebrated one for Xbox Live that involved the original designer. If you have a favorite remake, let us know.
All in all, it's shaping up to be a fun chapter to research and write, but I'd love to hear from you. Chime in with your thoughts on one of the greatest games ever made!
Comments
I realize that this may be a bit off beat, but there were a TON of PAC-man books and 'hint guides' that were published back at the top of the craze. They showed how toget the 'best' score and set up pac-man as one of the first pattern games.
Any look at that game should mention that it single handedly started the 'game guide' franchise as a publishing icon.
http://www.atarimagazines.com/cva/v1n2/pacman.php
and there has to be earlier creative mag mentions than this.
http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Pac-Man/Patterns
http://sngp.classicgaming.gamespy.com/games/pac/pac_faq.htm
Pattern guides like this were the base of many video game strategy offerings to come.
Although Space Invaders had to have some published guides before, Pac-man made them a profitable book format.
-Cecil
Thanks, Cecil, that's good stuff. Space Invaders is one of the games in the book too with its own chapter, but since it's alphabetical at this point, we'll be working on that later.
Wii: 1345 2773 2048 1586 | PS3: ArmchairArcade
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director | Armchair Arcade, Inc.
Thanks for the replies, Cecil (good to hear from ya again!) and Mark. I agree about the importance of the game guides and will definitely mention it. That K.C. game looks quite interesting too; nice how the dots move (good innovation). I also really enjoy that video itself; good production and I *wish* we could get something like that going here at AA (an official "show" of some sort) that we could all contribute to.
I laughed when I saw this. Pretty fun, too, though it's a bit hard to see the dots.
I laughed when I saw this. Pretty fun, too, though it's a bit hard to see the dots.
Yeah, that's actually meant to be a favicon. It's funny that you found that, because just yesterday I was introduced to the favicon that plays Defender. Crazy stuff that I never knew about!
Wii: 1345 2773 2048 1586 | PS3: ArmchairArcade
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director | Armchair Arcade, Inc.
Would be cool to have a selection of those 'favicons' up here somewhere!
Editor / Pixelator - Armchair Arcade, Inc.
www.markvergeer.nl
Would be cool to have a selection of those 'favicons' up here somewhere!
We could always replace ours with one of those if there were no restrictions or if we knew how they were done. I just did ours quick and am not entirely pleased with it. In fact, one of your icons might be a better choice than what we have now, Mark, as long as it was unique to AA...
Wii: 1345 2773 2048 1586 | PS3: ArmchairArcade
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director | Armchair Arcade, Inc.
I'm stumped again trying to think of the name of a game I had for the C-64. It was a maze game you viewed from top-down, but the gimmick was that your character could open and close a bunch of gates to try to trap creatures within. If you trapped one, the square would become a close up of his face (pretty creepy). The sound was also pretty weird.
For the life of me I can't find it.
I'm stumped again trying to think of the name of a game I had for the C-64. It was a maze game you viewed from top-down, but the gimmick was that your character could open and close a bunch of gates to try to trap creatures within. If you trapped one, the square would become a close up of his face (pretty creepy). The sound was also pretty weird.
For the life of me I can't find it.
I remember that one, but not the name sadly... Another interesting variation was with Lady Bug, which also had doors, so I wonder if that game we can't remember with the faces was a type of clone of that. Lock n Chase was quite similar too. Pepper II was a bit maze like, with zippers instead of dots. Other Pac-Man variations also utilized the idea of leaving a trail rather than gobbling a trail.
One of my favorite maze games back in the day was Serpentine, which was a bit like the sequel to KC Munchkin.
In the public domain, Pac-Man was huge, especially on the C-64, with games like 3-D Man and Pakacuda, plus it was "cloned" on a bunch of systems as well, like the Kaypro and Exidy Sorcerer.
You know, it might be interesting to consider Dig Dug a type of maze game too. That and Mr Do!. And Wizard of Wor, etc. Geez, so many...
Of course Pac-Man's move to 3D was hit or miss, beginning with the isometric scoller, Pac-Mania all the way through the last generation Pac-Man World and Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness games...
Wii: 1345 2773 2048 1586 | PS3: ArmchairArcade
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director | Armchair Arcade, Inc.
I have acquired Pacman Collection for the Atari 7800 which is a mega-hack of the official Ms Pacman title. If features all of the official versions of Pacman and Ms. Pacman and all of the major hacks that made it to the arcades.
These are backed up by a rather nice "plus" mode which changes the gameplay even more. Finally you can select a mode that randomly throws mazes from all of the hacks and versions at you in one game. A truly excellent job.
The ROM is available from atariage as far as I know but I have the lovely cartridge and specially printed manual.