Pacmania
Platform Developer Publisher
Arcade Namco Namco (Japan)
Atari Games (US)

After his adventures in opening doors, and then spending some time running through Pac-Land, Pac took a three-year sabbatical. During this time, he learned that door-opening and fairy cheuferring may not be the future he envisioned, and perhaps it was time to return to his roots of eating dots in a maze. Also, he learned to become three-dimensional.
 
The result is Pacmania, the isometric Pac-Man game where Pac now has the advantage of jumping! It ended up being another pretty average sequel... Not bad, but not great. Basically it was a fine concept, but with some tweaks, it could have been a lot better. The ghost's AI in this game was quite retarded, and the movement patterns of each ghost weren't quite as distinct as they were in the other games, meaning that the ghosts had a habit of following each other and attacking in groups. The early rounds proved quite easy because of the dumb ghosts and the new jumping ability, and Namco seemed to try to compensate for this by stuffing the maze with ghosts in the later stages. There were the four original ghosts, the lady ghost Sue, and then the new jumping ghosts known as "Funkys", of which up to four could appear. It's when the latter ghosts come into play that things get difficult.
 
Really, if the game had better ghost patterns and maybe some sort of arrow prompt to point Pac toward where the last few pellets remained, this would have been a pretty darn good game. As it was, it was... well.. still not too bad, and people basically enjoyed it.

HAPPY FACTS: A couple cute things to note are that Inky is always cockeyed in this game, and Sue is purple with distinctive female eyes. Both are clear inspirations from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Another thing worth nothing is that the second maze is a 3D version of the original Pac-Man maze. This is also the first Pac-Man game to have an ending. It loops between four different mazes, but it doesn't loop forever, and the player will eventually see credits and a Game Over screen after clearing a certain amount.

Ms. Pac-Man
Platform Developer Publisher
7800 GCC Atari

Surely you all remember the Atari 7800. You know, the Atari machine released in '87 to compete with the NES and Master System. You do remember, right? Well, it existed; take my word for it.

It also got by far the most accurate port of Ms. Pac-Man for any system at the time. If you wanted a great version of Ms. Pac, you had to get a 7800. Or you could, you know, get an NES and get Super Mario and Zelda and Metroid and stuff. Your choice!

Jr. Pac-Man
Platform Developer Publisher
2600 GCC Atari
 
I know some of you may be thinking "A new 2600 release in 1987!? Surely thou jest, Sir Lesnick!" to which I'd ask why the hell you were talking like that. After that I would explain that back when the NES came out and the home console market was freshly revived, Atari saw fit to release some finished-but-unreleased 2600 games (including this, which was actually finished in '84) and market their ol' horse as a super-affordable system which already had a huge, affordable library. Along with that, since their 7800 was fully-backward compatible, releasing new 2600 games meant the 7800 got new games as well.
 
Let's not get into the details of whether or not that whole plan worked. Let's talk about the game. It was, as you could imagine, the finest, most advanced Pac-Man game the 2600 ever had. GCC was a talented group, and by '84, they knew the hardware well. The screen scrolled vertically instead of horizantally, but aside from that, it matched the arcade game pretty darn well. A bit too well, actually, as it retained the crazy mad difficulty. But some people like that kind of thing.


Pacmania
Platform Developer Publisher
Commodore 64 Teque Grandslam (Europe)
Atari ST Teque Grandslam (Europe)
Amiga Teque Grandslam (Europe)
Amstrad CPC Teque Grandslam (Europe)
Spectrum Teque Grandslam (Europe)
MSX Teque Grandslam (Europe)

Over in Europeville, Grandslam signed on as Namco's newest licensed distributor, and they put the group of developers known as Teque to work on bringing Pacmania to the many platforms still available in those waters. They had the honor of being the first to bring the new Pac-Man game to people's homes. I haven't played any of these versions myself, but they are reportedly quite nice.
 
This year also saw the release of the NES Pac-Man port in the States, something already talked about on the previous page. Aside from that, another uneventful year for the yellow guy.


Pac-Land
Platform Developer Publisher
MSX Mr. Micro Grandslam (Europe, 1988)
Atari ST Mr. Micro Grandslam (Europe)
Amiga Mr. Micro Grandslam (Europe)
Amstrad CPC Mr. Micro Grandslam (Europe)
PC Engine Namco Namcot (Japan)
NEC (US, 1990)

Grandslam hits another home run with some ports of Pac-Land this time around, and I'm afraid I can't say much about that.
 
But also during this year, Namco themselves released a dazzling port of the game for the PC Engine, known in the US as the Turbografx. This system may have been perpetually in last place in all the system wars over here, but it spent a few years in Japan as the most powerful console available, and it had quite a long and happy life. Namco simply adored the system, as it gave them a chance to bring some arcade-perfect ports of a few of their titles to the players' homes.
 
The port of Pac-Land actually improved on the original game, with some newly-designed and tightened level layouts and no more of that endless looping leading to inevitable death. The game now had a finite amount of stages and a new ending!
 
Of course, it was still Pac-Land. There were now more platform games to compare it to, and even with the improvements, it was still a step down from Mario, and hell, even Adventure Island.
 
Still, if you ever want to play what has remained the best version of Pac-Land out there to this day, go for the PCE version.

FUN FACT: Beat the game, and you're allowed to play a harder version of the game, titled "Pac-Land Pro". If you can somehow make it to stage 25 of this diffcult version, the game ceases to be "Pac-Land" and officially becomes "Butt Rape: the Home Game".

Pacmania
Platform Developer Publisher
MSX2 Namco Namcot (Japan)
X68000 Namco Namcot (Japan)
 
Namco also developed ports for a couple other systems no one in the US ever heard of until the age of emulation. From what I have heard, Namco's own port of Pacmania for the MSX2 ended up being worse than the MSX1 version made by Teque. However, the X68K port was arcade-perfect; quite top-notch.


Pac-Man
Platform Developer Publisher
Game Boy Namco Namco
 
It took a while, but Namco finally has a US branch to handle localization at this point, with the colorless version of Pac being their first Pac-Man game published in the states all on their own. The viewing area was limited, and Pac was stuck in shades of Game Boy Green, but nonetheless, this was a game that worked out well in portable format, and I'm sure a lot of people enjoyed it.
 
Namco would continue releasing console games in Japan as "Namcot" for a while, while simply staying as "Namco" for the US releases. I won't be noting this in all the info boxes, because even I'm not that anal.

Ms. Pac-Man
Platform Developer Publisher
NES Atari Tengen
Lynx Atari Atari
 
Although they had the rights handed to them long ago, it would be a little while before Namco would officially welcome Ms. Pac into their family, so the job of her home ports still fell upon the hands of domestic programmers.
 
For the NES, good ol' Atari came forward, and while their game recieved no Nintendo Seal of Quality, it was quite exemplary. Ms. Pac had a nice, large playfield to move around in, as well as more mazes than the original (there were four sets to choose from). Best of all, Pac-Man is now involved in the game, allowing for 2-player simultaneous play. The husband and wife are now doing it together, just like Mates of State!

The Lynx version of Ms. Pac predated Namco's Game Boy game, making it the first portable Pac-Man game ever. Back then, it didn't seem to occur to the programmers that the screen was tiny and the resolution was low, so they MAY not want to cram the whole maze into one screen, and opt for a scrolling playfield instead. But that's what they did, and everything just looks hilariously tiny in this port.
 
Still, it plays like Ms. Pac-Man, and that's pretty much the important thing. Like the NES version, new mazes were added to keep things fresh. This is a trend you'll be seeing in these reviews, by the way. Third-party ports from companies like Atari will almost always add little enhancements like this, whereas the ones made by Namco themselves almost never do.


Pac-Man
Platform Developer Publisher
Game Gear Namco Namco

If you were colorblind and had an IQ of less than twelve, then you wouldn't care which portable you had. Of course, you wouldn't care if you drank from the toilet, either.
 
...So said Sega, and it makes sense when you think about it, but even so, nobody on the planet wanted a Game Gear. Any portable system without the word "Boy" in their name just never seemed to have much luck, really.

Ultimately, the Game Gear's main accomplishment was not bombing as badly as the Lynx did, but Sega can also take comfort in the fact that their handheld got what was not only the best portable version of Pac-Man, but what would be the most arcade-perfect port of the game for ANY system for a few years.

Ms. Pac-Man
Platform Developer Publisher
Genesis Innerprise Tengen
SMS Atari Tengen (Europe)

The Ms. Pac games for the Sega systems were essentially ports of Atari's NES game, and were thus ports of a port. Both games play like the NES version, and have all the same features, new mazes, and 2-player mode. In the case of Innerprise's Genesis version, it now had shiny, shiny upgraded graphics that were just so brain-meltingly purty.
 
And you know what? 15 years later, it remains the best home version of Ms. Pac-Man. It's all downhill from here!

Pac-Land
Platform Developer Publisher
Lynx Atari Atari
C64 Mr. Micro Quicksilva (Europe)

Europe is such a weird country, with all these crazy old systems like the C64 still being marketed for so long over there and stuff! Anyway, Pac-Land had the honor of being the last Pac game developed for the C64. It looked quite nice, actually. Like the earlier Mr. Micro ports, it included an adaptation of the arcade game with the interesting addition of a map screen.
 
Atari's Lynx version was not very well-recieved. The system was already starving for decent games, and nobody wanted a port of dumb ol' Pac-Land.

Pacmania
Platform Developer Publisher
NES Atari Tengen
Genesis Atari Tengen
SMS TecMagik TecMagik (Europe)

Namco themselves didn't want to take on the task of bringing Pacmania to the weaker home systems, so again, Atari stepped forward. They actually did pretty well! Even with the scaled-down graphics, the games play very closely to the original (which, of course, was just an okay game, but anyway). Finding info on TecMagik's version is hard, but hell, I'm sure they did a good job too.


THE INCREDIBLY FUCKING COMPLETE PAC-MAN GAME LIST VERSION 2