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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/
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