 Pacmania
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. 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
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
 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
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
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
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
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
Pac-Land
Pacmania
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
