Ms. Pac-man: Maze Madness PSX release Developer/US Publisher: Namco 3-D puzzle game featuring Ms. Pac. Looks interesting. Ms. Pac-man: Maze Madness Dreamcast release Developer/US Publisher: Namco 3-D puzzle game featuring Ms. Pac. For the Dreamcast too! Looks quite interesting... Ms. Pac-man: Maze Madness Nintendo64 release Developer/US Publisher: Namco 3-D puzzle game featuring Ms. Pac. For the N64 too... Eh. Namco Museum Dreamcast release Developer/US Publisher: Namco It'll be just the same shit apparently, no difference from the N64 version. Nothing to get excited about. In fact, DON'T get excited. If this excites you, you need to re-evaluate your life. Pac-man: He comes in many forms. In his original form, he's a little flat yellow disk that eats everything. In games like Pacmania and Arrangement, he's a yellow SPHERE that eats everything. In other cases he grows arms and legs and runs around, doing everything from skateboarding to rescuing princesses to raising a family, either on his own or with the help of a magical cursor. And in yet another case, he's a scary yellow alien thing with two legs and blood-red saucer eyes, capable of giving kids nightmares (really, what WAS that artist at Midway thinking). In any case, we love him. Actually, I think it's pretty much the first two cases where we love him; in all the others, he's pretty damned retarted. Ms. Pac-man: She's also known as Pepper by those who actually remember the Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Despite her being reduced to the housewife role in the end, Ms. Pac could be considered an ideal feminist. Pac starred in about 20 different games, and Ms. Pac starred in only one (soon to be two), which happened to be more successful than every single game Pac has starred in so far. How's that for girl power? Baby Pac-man: He was brought to the couple by the stork, which helped them get around the problem of their complete abscence of sex organs. Despite being a toddler, Baby had to navigate through both video AND pinball playfields to escape the ghosts. Life ain't fair sometimes... Jr. Pac-man: The delinquent child of the Pac family who ran off with one of the ghosts and was never heard from again. Nowadays when he is brought up, Pac insists that he was never his son. Pac Jr.: A weiner who was introduced later on in the Pac family, long after Baby Pac was introduced, even though he's a bit older. In fact he apparently got a bit older in his second appearence, while Baby Pac was still a baby. Strange things are going on in Pac Land. Currently at age 35, Jr. Pac has no girlfriend and still lives with his parents. Professor Pac-man: Claims to be smart, yet he starred in one of the worst videogame flops of mankind. What kind of professor is he? Super Pac-man: Looks exactly like Pac-man, except he flies, and has special powers enabling him to eat fruit and doors located several miles below him. Sometimes he even wears an incredibly gay cape and mask. A lot of people beleive he and Pac-man are one in the same. Other idiots, including the Hanna-Barbera animation team, do not. Chomp Chomp: This little blue dog appeared briefly in the American version of Pac Land, and was never seen again. Apparenty Pac got TOO hungry one day. Sour Puss: A little orange cat who may or may not have appeared in the US version of Pac Land. I'm too lazy to check. He did appear in the cartoon though. He also has never been seen since. Animals have no place in the Pac community. Oikake: also known as Akabei, Shadow, Inky, and Urchin. He's fast, agressive, and he has the smarts, making him the worst enemy Pac has ever had. Yes, including the ghost witch. Machibuse: also known as Aosuke, Bashful, Blinky, and Stylist. He likes to try to trap Pac-man from the other end of the tunnel, supposedly. He appears cockeyed in Pacmania, either because he was sufferering from brain damage at the time, or because Namco just wanted to go with the portrayal he had in the H-B cartoon, for some dumbass reason. Kimagure: also known as Pinky, Speedy, and Romp. He's slower than Oikake, but he's nicknamed Speedy anyway. No one said monsters (or the people at Midway) were very bright. Otoboke: also known as Guzuta, Pokey, Clyde, and Crybaby. He is one confused monster. Sue: A female monster who started out orange, then dyed herself purple so no one would confuse her with that dink Clyde. Tim: Clyde's twin brother, who got his three seconds of fame chasing around Jr. Pac. Pal: a friendly little monster who tries to help Pac Mac man collect his stuff from the other monsters, and does a bad job at it. Yum Yum: a little monster who eloped with Jr. Pac-man. No one's heard from them since, but we figure they're living a happy life far away from all the horrible Pac spinoffs that have been released since. Kinky: a mysterious, shades-toting monster capable of merging with other monsters, giving them super powers. The tradeoff is that he's a lot more brittle than the others, capable of being eaten without the help of power pellets. Jumping Monster: even though Namco never bothered giving him a real name, Jumping Monster will always remain the most loved character in Pac history. Wait a minute... no he won't. The Ghost Witch of Nentor: Since the monsters have had no luck getting Pac on their own, they decide to serve under this hideous lady. Then, after chasing him through time, they decided they didn't want to be reminded of having starred in the worst Pac game in history... plus they remembered they were actually MONSTERS, not ghosts. Thus, they left her bitch-ass behind. Mezmeron: This big bald guy does not actually exist. He was the creation of an uninspired Hanna-Barbera writer (i.e. any of the Hanna-Barbera writers). Ask Pac, and he'll deny ever having met this "Mezmeron," as he rightfully should. Toc-man: A cyborg who wants to get rid of Pac because he's jealous of him, I beleive. I'd be jealous of a guy who can garner repeated praise and rave reviews from the same old game over and over for over 20 years too.... Buttercup: A fairy princess who appears in Pac's universe for no apparent reason. Pac has to rescue her from some evil castle, and I doubt anyone who has played Pac Land has actually succeeded in helping him do that. Namco: the big guys themselves. Creators of Pac Man, as well as Galaxian, Dig Dug, Time Crisis, and the incredibly overrated Tekken. Was stationed exclusively in Japan for a while, but is now a relatively big company with developers in Japan and the US. Also known as Namcot when making 8-bit games. Don't ask us why. (Bally) Midway: Midway was paired with Namco during the early eighties, responsible for bringing their arcade games to the US. They overstepped their bounds almost right off the bat by releasing several unauthorized spinoffs of Pac-man, which Namco was naver really pleased with. They still take credit for Pac-man on their web page, and now that they've bought Atari Games, they're amiguously taking credit for Pong too. ("The Midway and Atari brands have generated revolutionary, record-breaking games such as Pong, Defender, Missile Command, Pac-Man..") (Bally) Williams: Along with Midway, it was owned by Bally throughout the eighties. Because of this, the Bally Midway and Williams labels have been used interchangeably until recently, but it's really only the pinball games that the Williams team has actually developed, including Mr. and Mrs. Pac and Baby Pac. Since Midway split from the group, Bally Williams has continued developing units for casinos, and the occasional video pinball game. Atari: We've all watched with pity as Atari went from the only company, to the best company, to a struggling company, to a downright embarrasing company, and finally to a dead company throughout the age of videogames. It's the company that has always been primarily responsible for putting Pac on the home systems. In fact, that's about all they could do during the turbulent videogame crash that they never recovered from. They also put in the US arcades Pacmania, Galaga '88, and (sort of) Pac & Pal. They developed games for the Nintendo and Genesis under the Tengen label, which was one of the first of many entities to be sued by Nintendo. The Rest: Innerprise, Grandslam, Quicksilva, Thunder Mountain, and INTV all developed ports of Pac games for the home systems. Virtuality made the VR game. Digital Eclipse is either the same as Innerprise, or they're theives. Atried Concept and Mindscape developed the worst Pac-man game ever. Coleco, Mattel, Amstrad, Commodore, Sinclair, Texas Instruments, IBM, Apple, Philips, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sega, and Sony all had Pac-man released for their game and computer systems. Did I forget anyone? Namco did not create Ms. Pac Man. Hackers developed it for the most part, and Midway created the character and published the game. If someone tells you otherwise, smack them in the face and tell them they're an idiot. At this point, even Namco themselves may deny the truth, but the fact remains that they never had anything to do with her creation, short of making a game engine to work off of. For a while, I didn't think Pac Land was inspired by the H-B cartoon, despite numerous claims. But after checking dates, it does indeed turn out that the cartoon debuted a year earlier than the game, and since the games music is the same as the show's theme song, well... huh. However, the fact remains that the arcade game didn't completely resemble the show until Midway changed it, despite numerous claims. Namco even reinstated the original look in all the home conversions. Some may be aware that a game called "Pac Man '88," by Midway, is mentioned on the "Killer List of Videogames" text file circulated on the internet. There's no real proof that this game exists (it's one of the few games on the list that completely lacks a description), and as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't. The game has even been removed from the new web version of KLOV... I originally planned on including all the Pac Man bootlegs (e.g. Hangly Man, Pirahna, etc.) and clones in this list, then decided against it upon realizing it would increase the size of the list by 5000%. I grabbed information from various online sources to make this list, most frequently the Pac-page, which has more info than all the other Pac sites I have seen [too bad the author hasn't updated it in over a year... =P By the way, the pictures of the more obscure Pac-Man games, like Pac-Man VR and Baby Pac-Man, came from that site as well. -ed.] You can feel free to suggest corrections and additions to me (Josh) at geobreeder@hotmail.com. Joshua Lesnick http://studio-zoe.com/wendy/ |