back to article WTF happened to Pac-Man?

During the finale of this season’s King of the Nerds, one of the nerd challenges was to complete the first level of Pac-Man in a set time. I was delighted to see they were playing the original arcade version, albeit on an iPad. Pac-Man: original and best? Pac-Man: original and best? Pac-Man is 34 years old this year. With …

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  1. 404

    Donkey Kong

    Was better-> stoner snob back in the Day-> Ya'll will love this. Ar Force guys from the local Titan Missile bases would get me fscked.exe and we'd ice up* the Donkey Kong over at the Sicilian pizza place down the road...

    Good times

    ;)

    * ice up: load the top-facing facade with quarters, preventing anybody from calling the machine.

  2. DaneB

    Other weirdness

    Where's Ms. Pacman or, more to the point, the mystery of that Happy Eater logo???

  3. Steve 16
    Happy

    Pacman simulator

    One of my kids shared this gem with me at the weekend.

    Place your index finger just inside the entrance to your ear canal and wiggle it up and down.

    Waka Waka Waka Waka....

  4. Michael Strorm Silver badge

    I haven't played "Pac Land" personally, but from what I've seen the mechanics and design look totally unrelated to the original Pac-Man game.

    That apparently came out only a few years after the original, but whether or not it's a good game in its own right, it does appear to be an early example of creating "sequels" based solely around the "characters" rather than the gameplay mechanics of the original- the same thing that led to the modern, soulless Pac-Man-in-Name-Only game that the author decries.

    In fact, apparently the graphics in its US release were based upon those in the Hanna Barbera Pac-Man cartoon. (Which I remember being a fan of as a kid- I think before I'd ever actually played the original Pac-Man game- but doesn't look that great to me now!). So *that* was a sort-of-spin-off of a cartoon as well!

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    smbc's take

    I love smbc's take on pacman.

    http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2736

  6. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

    We weren't all after high scores

    Instead, it’s all about competing for the high score and comparing those scores with friends.

    No doubt it was for many, but I never cared about my arcade-game scores, and I don't believe any of my friends did either. For us they were a diversion, and a social one - it was rare to play a game without one or two friends watching over your shoulder - but completely uncompetitive. I don't think any of us wanted to devote the time or money required to actually become any good at any of those games.

    (And yes, this was my era; I was in high school in the first half of the '80s.)

    1. Tom 38

      Re: We weren't all after high scores

      You must be nuts - arcade games cost per play. High scores are achieved by playing for a long amount of time on one credit, and therefore, achieving high scores was actually akin to playing for the cheapest amount.

      Take Street Fighter 2, if you just played one round and died, thats 10p for 2 minutes. On the other hand, if you complete the game on one credit, thats 10p for 30 minutes play. I don't know about you, but when I was playing arcade games, I wanted to play for as long as possible as cheaply as possible.

  7. jelabarre59

    Munchies

    The first PacMan game I saw was in a local nightclub (The Left Bank in Mt Vernon, NY). It had a monochrome screen, was in a Space Invaders cabinet, and was called "Munchies" (with the name hand-made with Letraset letters). I remember watching Andy Gill (from The Gang of Four) playing it.

  8. BenBell
    Megaphone

    Damnit!!!

    Just when I thought I'd managed to box up my SNES for good, I read this. As soon as I get home from work, out it comes and in will go PacMan followed shortly by Zelda (LTTP) and possibly Mario 1 & 3.

    There goes my weekend

  9. aqk
    Megaphone

    Get DIGGER! It's Free and runs on all platforms!

    Not sure about win 8.1 though... I haven't tried it here. But it did run on my old Win-7.

    And you do not even need a 5¼" floppy!

    Windmill Software's famous 1980 Digger!

    See DIGGER.ORG for the disgusting details.

  10. herman

    Yah, when Pacman hit the arcades, four function electronic calculators were still newfangled notions. In the end, Pacman eat the pinball machines and everything became electronic.

  11. Zot

    The Pac-man dossier

    http://home.comcast.net/~jpittman2/pacman/pacmandossier.html

    ...Includes information about every aspect of the game, including ghost movement analysis, and tile locations. It's quite interesting in parts, especially each ghost's targeting code which is basically a how to win guide.

    I never really played it myself, I thought it was a girl's game to be honest. :p

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