Pac-Man
Pac-Man, also known as simply Pac, is an arcade video game that was made by Namco and designed by Toru Iwatani. It was released in 1980, and became very popular in the history of games.
In Pac-Man, the player plays as Pac-Man, who is a yellow circle with a triangular cut for his mouth, move around a maze. Enemies in the game are the four ghosts, Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde. The goal is to eat every Pac-Dot while not getting caught by the ghosts. For extra points, fruits that appear can also be eaten. When Pac-Man eats a power pellet, the ghosts turn blue for a short period of time and can be eaten. The time that the ghosts are blue generally decreases from one stage to the next. Beginning at stage 19, the ghosts do not turn blue at all when a power pellet is eaten. Even though the game has 256 stages, the last level has an impassable glitch, which was fixed for later versions of the game.
The player begins the game with 3 lives, and lose one each time Pac-man collides with a ghost. The game ends when all lives are lost. Pac-man gets an extra life once the player gets 10,000 points.
The game is called Puck-Man, or Puck, in Japan. The game was renamed to Pac-Man in the United States so that nobody could change the "P" to "F".[1] There were many sequels and remakes based on the game. Hanna-Barbera made a animated TV show airing on ABC in the early 1980s. The game was also part of Namco Museum games. There is a Namco Museum Remix for the Wii.
Pac-Man was one of the first games to have cutscenes. It has 3 cutscenes in total.[2] Music for Pac-Man was made by Shigeichi Ishimura and Toshio Kai.
Playing Features
change- 4 Ghosts To Run Away From, With Different Personalities!
- A Game-Breaking Glitch On Level 256! (formerly)
- Take Turns In Multiplayer!
Remakes and sequels
change| 1980 | Pac-Man |
|---|---|
| 1981 | Ms. Pac-Man |
| 1982 | Pac-Man Plus |
| Super Pac-Man | |
| Baby Pac-Man | |
| 1983 | Professor Pac-Man |
| Pac & Pal | |
| Jr. Pac-Man | |
| 1984 | Pac-Land |
| 1985 | |
| 1986 | |
| 1987 | Pac-Mania |
| 1988 | |
| 1989 | |
| 1990 | |
| 1991 | |
| 1992 | |
| 1993 | Pac-Attack |
| 1994 | Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures |
| 1995 | Pac-In-Time |
| 1996 | Pac-Man Arrangement |
| Pac-Man VR | |
| 1997 | |
| 1998 | |
| 1999 | Pac-Man World |
| 2000 | Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness |
| Pac-Man: Adventures in Time | |
| 2001 | Ms. Pac-Man: Quest for the Golden Maze |
| 2002 | Pac-Man All-Stars |
| Pac-Man Fever | |
| Pac-Man World 2 | |
| 2003 | Pac-Man Vs. |
| 2004 | |
| 2005 | Pac-Pix |
| Pac-Man Pinball Advance | |
| Pac 'n Roll | |
| Pac-Man World 3 | |
| 2006 | Pac-Man World Rally |
| 2007 | Pac-Man Championship Edition |
| 2008 | |
| 2009 | |
| 2010 | Pac-Man Championship Edition DX |
| Pac-Man Party | |
| 2011 | Pac-Man Battle Royale |
| 2012 | |
| 2013 | Pac-Man Chomp Mania |
| Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures | |
| 2014 | Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures 2 |
| 2015 | World's Largest Pac-Man |
| 2016 | Pac-Man 256 |
| Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 | |
| 2017 | |
| 2018 | |
| 2019 | |
| 2020 | Pac-Man Mega Tunnel Battle |
| 2021 | Pac-Man 99 |
| 2022 | Pac-Man World Re-Pac |
| 2023 | |
| 2024 | Pac-Man Mega Tunnel Battle: Chomp Champs |
Pac-Man was followed by a series of sequels, remakes, and re-imaginings, and is one of the longest-running video game franchises in history. The first of these was Ms. Pac-Man, developed by the American-based General Computer Corporation and published by Midway in 1982. The character's gender was changed to female in response to Pac-Man's popularity with women, with new mazes, moving bonus items, and faster gameplay being implemented to increase its appeal. Ms. Pac-Man is one of the best-selling arcade games in North America, where Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man had become the most successful machines in the history of the amusement arcade industry.[3] Legal concerns raised over who owned the game caused Ms. Pac-Man to become owned by Namco, who assisted in production of the game. Ms. Pac-Man inspired its own line of remakes, including Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness (2000), and Ms. Pac-Man: Quest for the Golden Maze, and is included in many Namco and Pac-Man collections for consoles.
Namco's own follow-up to the original was Super Pac-Man, released in 1982. This was followed by the Japan-exclusive Pac & Pal in 1983.[4] Midway produced many other Pac-Man sequels during the early 1980s, including Pac-Man Plus (1982), Jr. Pac-Man (1983), Baby Pac-Man (1983), and Professor Pac-Man (1984). Other games include the isometric Pac-Mania (1987), the side-scrollers Pac-Land (1984), Hello! Pac-Man (1994), and Pac-In-Time (1995),[5] the 3D platformer Pac-Man World (1999), and the puzzle games Pac-Attack (1991) and Pac-Pix (2005). Iwatani designed Pac-Land and Pac-Mania, both of which remain his favorite games in the series. Pac-Man Championship Edition, published for the Xbox 360 in 2007, was Iwatani's final game before leaving the company. Its neon visuals and fast-paced gameplay was met with acclaim,[6] leading to the creation of Pac-Man Championship Edition DX (2010) and Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 (2016).[7]
Coleco's tabletop Mini-Arcade versions of the game yielded 1.5 million units sold in 1982.[8][9] Nelsonic Industries produced a Pac-Man LCD wristwatch game with a simplified maze also in 1982.[10]
Namco Networks sold a downloadable Windows PC version of Pac-Man in 2009 which also includes an enhanced mode which replaces all of the original sprites with the sprites from Pac-Man Championship Edition. Namco Networks made a downloadable bundle which includes its PC version of Pac-Man and its port of Dig Dug called Namco All-Stars: Pac-Man and Dig Dug. In 2010, Namco Bandai announced the release of the game on Windows Phone 7 as an Xbox Live game.[11]
For the weekend of May 21–23, 2010, Google changed the logo on its homepage to a playable version of the game[12] in recognition of the 30th anniversary of the game's release. The Google Doodle version of Pac-Man was estimated to have been played by more than 1 billion people worldwide in 2010,[13] so Google later gave the game its own page.[14]
In April 2011, Soap Creative published World's Biggest Pac-Man, working together with Microsoft and Namco-Bandai to celebrate Pac-Man's 30th anniversary. It is a multiplayer browser-based game with user-created, interlocking mazes.[15]
For April Fools' Day in 2017, Google created a playable of the game on Google Maps where users were able to play the game using the map onscreen.[16]
A Pac-Man-themed downloadable content package for Minecraft was released in 2020 in commemoration of the game's 40th anniversary. This pack introduced a ghost called 'Creepy', based on the Creeper.[17]
Technology
changeThe original arcade system board had one Z80A processor, running at 3.072 MHz, 16 kbyte of ROM and 3 kbyte of static RAM. Of those 1 kbyte each was for video RAM, color RAM and generic program RAM. There were two custom chips on the board: the 285 sync bus controller and the 284 video RAM addresser, but daughterboards made only from standard parts were also widely used instead. Video output was (analog) component video with composite sync. A further 8 kbyte of character ROM was used for characters, background tiles and sprites and an additional 1 kbit of static RAM was used to hold 4bpp sprite data for one scanline and was written to during the horizontal blanking period preceding each line. Sprite size was always 16x16 pixels, one of the four colors per pixel was for transparency (of the background).
The monitor was installed 90 degree rotated clockwise, the first visible scanline started in the top right corner and ends in the bottom right corner. The horizontal blanking period, which starts after the level indicator at the bottom is drawn, had a duration of 96 pixel clock ticks, enough time to fetch 4 bytes of sprite data per 16 clock ticks for 6 sprites. Although attribute memory exists for them, sprites 0 and 7 are unusable: Their pixel fetch timing windows are occupied by the bottom level indicator (which just precedes the hblank) for sprite 0 and two rows of characters at the top of the screen, which just follow the hblank, for sprite 7.
References
change- ↑ "Pacman 30th Anniversary". Retrieved 25 April 2010.
- ↑ "All Pac-Man Cutscenes". YouTube.
- ↑ "Past Presidents See Dip In Video Collections". Cash Box. Cash Box Pub. Co. 20 November 1982. p. 56.
- ↑ Parish, Jeremy (23 July 2013). "Remembering Pac & Pal, Pac-Man's Strangest Arcade Adventure". USgamer. Archived from the original on 23 January 2018. Retrieved 23 February 2020.
- ↑ "Pac-In-Time". Next Generation (6). Imagine Media: 113–4. June 1995.
- ↑ "Pac-Man Championship Edition for Xbox 360 Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 25 April 2020.
- ↑ Hatfield, Daemon (16 November 2010). "Pac-Man Championship Edition DX Review". IGN. Archived from the original on 19 November 2010. Retrieved 25 March 2020.
- ↑ "Mini-Arcades 'Go Gold'". Electronic Games. 1 (9): 13. November 1982. Archived from the original on 13 August 2012. Retrieved 5 February 2012.
- ↑ "Coleco Mini-Arcades Go Gold" (PDF). Arcade Express. 1 (1): 4. 15 August 1982. Archived (PDF) from the original on 8 November 2012. Retrieved 3 February 2012.
- ↑ "The Official Midway's Pac-Man Game Watch Instruction Manual" (PDF) (booklet). Nelsonic Industries. Archived (PDF) from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 3 November 2015.
- ↑ "A quick look at some of the new WP7 games from Namco". BestWP7Games. 9 November 2010. Archived from the original on 12 November 2010.
- ↑ "Google gets Pac-Man fever". cnet. 21 May 2010. Archived from the original on 27 October 2010.
- ↑ Fricker, Martin (24 May 2010). "Google gives Pac-Man boost with over 1 billion playing Goggle Doodle game in three days". Mirror. Retrieved 25 August 2021.
- ↑ "Pac-Man". Archived from the original on 29 August 2012. Retrieved 3 November 2015.
- ↑ Ki Mae Huessner. "World's Biggest Pac-Man Is Web Sensation". ABC News Internet Ventures. Archived from the original on 15 April 2014. Retrieved 13 April 2013.
- ↑ Garun, Natt (31 March 2017). "Google Maps morphs into Ms. Pac-Man for April Fools' Day". The Verge. Retrieved 27 December 2021.
- ↑ "Pac-Man Celebrates 40th Anniversary With Minecraft DLC, a Game You Play on Twitch, and Weird AI Programs". IGN. 22 May 2020. Retrieved 1 June 2020.
