all-the-pacs

[all-the-pacs]

Not Really Numbered, Just A Status Report

No, don't worry, we didn't forget. We just got hit hard by back-to-back-to-back weird stuff happening in our lives, so it turns out the project in which we simply play video games for fun got sent to the wayside for a bit. Not that we really had a schedule aside from one that happened more-or-less on accident for the first few posts, buuut don't expect a post tomorrow.

That being said. We hope to see you in a few days--unsure if we'll try and get it next Tuesday, a bit sooner, or maybe even a bit later--for more stuff! Until then, however, our ask box is and has always been open, and we'd be glad to answer any questions you happen to have, be it about the Yellow Circle himself, any other Namco arcade games, any games just in general, or just about whatever so long as it's relevant.

We just felt like postin' something because it felt awkward to leave it on dead silence after PacMan2 of all games, is all, and letting you know in case you found this blog outside of our main that we're still kickin' out here. See you (hopefully) soon!

#we do think it's funny that pacman2 did this to us TWICE now though. #first it made us not confident in the video format and we just kinda. put the project on pause. #and now it has hexed us to get too distracted now that we DO have a format we like!

[all-the-pacs]

#5 - PacMan2 (1981)

(ODE TO JOY STARTS BLARING)

What? The New Adventures? Nope. Ms. Pac-Man? Absolutely not. Super Pac-Man? Nowhere to be found! This, dearest readers, is the first instance of a game proclaiming itself to be the sequel to Pac-Man being used.

Here's the thing--this game almost didn't make the cut. Why? Plain and simple, it started out as a bootleg. Yep, it turns out she was not the first one to have that origin story (and if you're wondering why we're ominously saying "she", well... You'll see in due time, if you haven't caught on by the emphasis on her pronouns.) See, Entex--the manufacturers of this machine--originally made a Space Invaders handheld like this, but without asking Bally Midway, the then-publishers of the game in the west. Bally Midway tried to sue, and the court favored... In Entex's favor. Thusly, for a brief, brief period of time, before they decided to focus more on the Coleco Tabletop that released very near to this, Bally Midway must've figured "Ehh, what the heck." and decided to just hand them the license for their Pac-Man version. Named PacMan2. Because...

...We don't really know. We've heard rumors it's because this was the "first" Pac-Man game to feature a form of concurrent multiplayer, but the Coleco Tabletop either narrowly beat it out or narrowly didn't beat it out, depending on when that released; those both roughly released in 1981, but nobody's for certain when in 1981, considering early-era Video Game release dates are infamously a nightmare to confirm for certain. Hence, we figured we'd discuss this one right now, after Coleco Tabletop, just because it makes sense. (Also, when this thing had a brief release in Japan, they just eschewed this altogether by calling it "Hungry Pac".)

At any rate, we did say Bally Midway was allowed, and this was technically published by them, even if only for a few weeks or months, so... Welcome to the blog, PacMan2 Entex!

Also, this game, similarly to the Coleco Tabletop Pac-Man game, is on the Internet Archive, free for you to just kinda play it in-browser. Handy!

So, uh. Aside from the weird upbringing this game had, This game definitely feels at least a little more like a weird downgraded version of Pac-Man, we'll say that much! You still have extremely choppy movement in the Coleco Tabletop, but y'know. Ghosts actually look like ghosts! The maze is closer to the Arcade maze--there is some weird asymmetry as the ghost pen is closer to the left and there are pellets surrounding it, not to mention Pac-Man starts directly below it, but at least it kinda looks like the original maze. While there's only 2 ghosts, they can't do a 180 like the Coleco Tabletop ones. There are even functional tunnels to the left and right, though they are directly embedded in the wall rather than jutting out.

Power pellets are... Weird in this version. For one, they can't exactly change colors or remove features from the solid-sheeted ghosts in this version, so they just kinda... Flicker the ghost sprite to depict a ghost is vulnerable. Which definitely is a problem when we use static screenshots, huh? And when you eat a ghost, it displays a ghost and Pac-Man on the same tile, but displays the additional points on the score itself... But removes the trailing zeroes in front of it, so you know you gained 20 points, rather than just had your score set to 20. Also, yeah, you gain 20 points, not 200--kind of unsurprising that they'd divide every score by 10 (including making normal pellets only give 1 point!), seeing as they only had 4 digits to work with. (To be fair, Coleco Tabletop also truncated scores, it's just way more noticeable here since this is much lower-scoring overall with only 2 ghosts.)

Aside from that, uh... our adventures here were mostly short-lived. We were able to verify a 2-player mode exists! But without an actual second player, and without us able to figure out how to set the game to 2-player mode (there was no scan of the manual, and the setting we saw on MAME that seemed to set this up would crash the in-browser emulator. Weird.), we were kind of just left with what we could access this time. Weirdly, when we mashed the "start game" a bit, one time we got the game to start with three ghosts instead of two? And we once saw it mentioned it's possible to have four ghosts? No idea how that happened, and no idea how to replicate it.

Also, dying in this game--as well as game overs--are weird. You know how the "ate a ghost with a power pellet" animation displays Pac-Man with a ghost, but changes your score to a flat 20/40/etc.? Yeah, dying to a ghost has the same visual, but you just... See your ordinary score. Yep, it has the same animation.

Regardless of how scuffed this was--both in terms of gameplay and trying to run it--we think this was a more-or-less fine enough time, even if there wasn't much to talk about gameplay wise. But, we think that's fine enough. Sometimes, a game's best story really is just in how it exists in the first place!

And... That's 1981! Yep, we're all done with this year, and with it, we're done with LCD games for a long, long time. Next week we officially enter 1982, and with it, we're playing... Probably the most anticipated game since the actual ordinary version of Pac-Man. See you next time around!

A special thank you goes out to handheldgaming.com, with which this particular post would be a LOT less in-depth than it was.

#pacman #pac man #all the pacs #1981 #pacman2 #fun fact: this was the last game we played in the original incarnation of this project #originally we wanted this to be a video LP project but decided our commentary was NOT gelling with what we wanted to do. #from this point on we are in uncharted waters!

[all-the-pacs]

#4 - Pac-Man (Coleco Tabletop) (1981)

Now now, sweetie. We have Pac-Man at home.

Remember last week, when we said we were playing something that was officially sanctioned by Namco? Weeeell... We never said it was developed by Namco, just licensed.

Oh yeah, if Galaxian Hardware was us dipping our toes into the world of odd hardware, this is us full-on taking the plunge into the depths of the weird, obscure stuff we have to play. Behold, ladies and germs, the first official home port of Pac-Man! ...Technically, anyways.

For a tiny bit of background context, the Coleco Tabletops were Coleco's own foray into the handheld gaming market. Yes, handheld, albeit maybe only on technicality. These things were no larger than something you could rest on your desk, though you could perhaps hold them directly if you really had the dexterity for it; they were approximately the size of a lunchbox, though, so uh, good luck! Oh, and these were shaped like tabletop arcade cabinets. Coleco had the pedigree to handle electronic games by this point--after all, they made the ColecoVision console just a year after this, so we sure hope they would--so this isn't too shocking to see them here.

As for hardware... Look, we're not gonna sugarcoat it--these are Game & Watch-esque, Tiger Electronics-esque "sheet that lights up certain segments depending on the gameplay" graphics. This is why we had to expressly define what "video elements" meant, because if we didn't, we'd have to decide for ourselves whether to either include or exclude these sorts of games. Ultimately, we decided there was no harm in including these even if there aren't exactly any liquid crystal display elements to the display.

Now, you may be asking--how the heck do we plan to play this thing. This is a full on physical unit, and these things are like, 60-to-100 US bucks secondhand nowadays. And sure, this thing is definitely fair game for emulation, but how would you go about emulating this sort of device?

The answer's a little easier than you might've been expecting.

Thanks, Internet Archive! They have been and are continuing to be invaluable for this project. Case-in-point, they have several pre-configured setups powered by MAME right for you to use in-browser. Handy!

Let's zoom in a bit, and start the main game up.

...Gross. And we're not talking about the visuals, but... Maybe we are, because look at those ghosts! While the original Pac-Man hinted that the ghosts may have secretly been slug monsters, here they look more like... amoebas. It doesn't help that one of their eyes is just identical to the slice they're using for pellets, and inside their foreheads is... Pac-Man??? These look a lot like they're gelatinous blob monsters that already ate a Pac-Man! This is NOT how we expected the first game to display multiple concurrent Pac-Men (Pac-Mans?) would go.

As you can imagine from a game that looks this rudimentary, its sounds and gameplay are also pretty bare-bones. Pac-Man, the Ghosts, everything moves with strict adherence to the grid, as you can expect from a Game & Watch-style game. The maze has been simplified--so much so one of the ghosts has been kicked out of the pen and starts the game outside of it! Yet there's also dots immediately surrounding the ghost pen, and with that, zero spot for a Bonus Fruit whatsoever (We'd guess there was just no way to put it on the display, to be fair...)--fundamentally, this game does not, in fact, score like the Arcade version. Which we wouldn't remark upon if the manual didn't brazenly declare it scores like the arcade version. (More on the manual in a bit.) And yet they still somehow got Pac-Man starting by moving left perfectly intact? How baffling, but we're not complaining.

And, perhaps most importantly, the ghosts/amoebas lack unique colors... And indeed, unique behaviors of any kind. The colors are understandable, but the AI is definitely a major downgrade. Now they all act more-or-less the same, and seem to behave a bit like a reverse Clyde, wandering around aimlessly but trying their best to get to Pac-Man when he's nearby.

Probably the biggest change is the fact that these ghosts/amoebas can turn around 180 degrees. In Pac-Man, the ghosts will never reverse directions unless the player eats a Power Pellet--otherwise, they will only make 90 degree turns. Here, however? They will gladly turn around entirely and you have to be careful to avoid that. Being able to turn around freely when the ghosts couldn't was a huge advantage that the player had, but now it's gone! This definitely makes things more frustrating, and while this behavior is often associated with unofficial clones of the game, if you can believe it, this won't be the last time we see this in an official version of the game.

For whatever reason, when you eat a Power Pellet--er, a red pellet, seeing as there's only one type of pellet, just two colors for it--the Pac-Man inside the ghosts vanish? This is what actually clued us in those little dots were meant to be eyes, but then that raises a whole new conundrum... The pellets have pupils now.

Admittedly, this is kind of a Morton's Fork situation that naturally comes from trying to represent every game state in a little drawing like this--either one of the ghosts' eyes would not have a pupil, or now the dots have pupils--but honestly, we feel like maybe the former would've been better, because the latter just kinda looks plain creepy!

In any case, that's the end of the main game, but if you paid attention to the header, you'd know we have two entire other game modes to cover! Yep, this was technically the first Pac-Man game with side content to it.

The second mode, described as Head-to-Head Pac-Man, is... Weird. Another first for the series is concurrent multiplayer! Yep, it debuted here, and we guess a second player mode that happens simultaneously was seen as so impressive that they just had to call it a whole new mode. Fittingly, the handheld has a second joystick just for this.

But... y'know, it's not really all that incredible, mostly for no fault of its own, just because Coleco Tabletop Pac-Man just isn't exactly powerful to do this concept justice. Still, very strange to see simultaneous co-op Pac-Man on this dinky thing from 1981!

The third game mode, Eat & Run, is perhaps a little more interesting, though...

So, a lot of firsts here. Pac-Man has entered the ghost pen--er, the "base" if the manual is to be trusted--for the first time! Not only that, he starts in the base. And the ghosts are in the four corners with four power pellets, with zero normal pellets in sight! This is definitely weird to see so early on in the series, alright.

So, in this mode, you effectively have to play Capture the Flag. The ghosts are already out, and they're guarding the four power pellets--your flags, so to speak. Leave the base when it's open, grab as many of the pellets as you can, but victory doesn't happen when you eat all four. No, victory is only called depending on if you make it back to the base, and the more pellets you have, the more points you get! This means it's actually possible to die with zero pellets left in the maze.

And, of course, the base isn't always open--sometimes, its doors will open and shut, so you have to make it over where while it's open, unless you want to try surviving a cycle until it re-opens. This is a pretty interesting take on the game, and to be honest... It's probably as complex as this thing can handle. We kinda wish we saw a version of this with proper ghost AI and a proper maze (and if that's coming up, don't spoil us.), because it's a fun concept! It's just bogged down by this game and its... eccentricities.

...Oh, right, let's talk about the manual. We never had a better time to elaborate on this, but uhh... It's more than a little flowery, which is a double edged sword. The upside is that it's extremely funny for it! The downside is that it takes a bit of trial-and-error to learn how to work this thing on the Internet Archive's embedded emulator, because instead of clarifying how to start a game, it...

Okay, um. Let's just. Show you a collage of some of the headers in this manual. You'll see what we mean when we say it's extremely funny unintentionally, but also unhelpful when you're trying to find something about, say, how to play the game.

Goodness. Overdramatic, much?! It's just a Game & Watch-esque downscaling of Pac-Man! It's really not that heartfelt, adrenaline-filled, and sobering! Just tell me the button to press to start Eat & Run mode! ...Though, this could serve as a great fodder for blackout poetry, if anything, and as you can see above, it definitely makes for great snippets.

...Well, that's about it for the Coleco Tabletop Pac-Man. But we're not quite out of the woods just yet. So, um, next time around, expect something... Well, a little similar to this, but also a bit different. It's published by Bally Midway themselves, too! ...Technically, anyways. Look, it's complicated. We'll just be seein' you around.

#all the pacs #pacman #pac man #coleco tabletop #1981 #man if halloween wasn't last week we'd totally consider those amoeba ghost things to be a fitting halloween thing #unfortunately that's not what we got. or maybe extremely fortunately depending on how you view things!

[all-the-pacs]

Love the blog idea btw forgot to add that in my last ask

Thanks! It took awhile to actually get around to this.

#asks #dr-strangeglove

[all-the-pacs]

How obscure is obscure when it comes to being played? Will things like archived official pacman webgames be on the list? Or does it only count if you can play it officially

We have absolutely no idea what you could consider to be the most obscure game we're going to be playing here, there's some dang good contenders here. Though, our vote at this exact moment might go to a DS game, which despite not being "obscure" in the sense that nobody knows about it... Well, we'll talk about that anecdote when we get there.

We've had Flashpoint on our PC for awhile now, and we've already been using MAME for awhile now. We hope that answers things in the most ominous, least committal way possible. ;P

#asks #dr-strangeglove #come to think of it there is one thing that is not formally part of the pacs list that you could argue is a combo of both #buuut we're saving that one for a rainy day and other such occasions

[all-the-pacs]

Perhaps a silly question, but figures I'd ask if anyone here knows; anyone know how to fix the Tumblr Audio Embed breaking on custom blog themes? It's not like, non-functional, but also the title of the audio from yesterday's post is leaking out of the post, and it looks very janky. Our cursory knowledge of HTML just isn't cutting it for figuring this one out.

#we tried a ''width: 100%'' but it did nothin'. #tumblr #if you know we'd gladly credit you for helping btw! #one day we'd like to compile a ''credits'' page for everyone who's helped in this project #getting assistance with this would defs make us consider getting off our bums and workin' on that

[all-the-pacs]

#3 - Pac-Man (Galaxian Hardware) (1981)

Who am I? I'm having an identity crisis over here...

Oh yeah. We're going there.

So, a bit of historical context for you at home. Galaxian has a bit of history in a much... seedier part of games publishing from the early 1980s. Namely, it was dirt cheap, its hardware was dirt cheap to clone, and it was powerful enough at processing video games.

As a result, a bunch of unofficial clones of arcade games based on Galaxian's hardware were created. We couldn't find if these happened to be conversion kits (which is a very different thing mostly done by official companies, which effectively lets you swap out the games across cabinets) or if these were wholesale original cabinets. These were mostly popular in countries that were not Japan or America, seeing as publishing wasn't exactly covered by a Namco or a Bally Midway over there, and nowadays these are all extremely, extremely rare. If not for the preservation efforts of arcade gamers, these would very likely be borderline lost!

There were other Galaxian Hardware clones of games, but Pac-Man probably is the most iconic one. Heck, the second most iconic one, Ghostmuncher, is just another clone of Pac-Man. ...No, we're not playing that one, are you nuts? We're only playing this one for two reasons:

It's notable. It's the first one of these bootlegs that's related to Pac-Man as far we can tell, and hey, we think this is the first bootleg Pac-Man game... Ever. We think it fits.

...It's very, very funny to us to first play Galaxian, then play Pac-Man, then play this.

...Yeep.

Already, you can see that while Galaxian's hardware is good enough, it isn't. Good. Enough. The colors are all wrong, and the screen margins are inherently different (224x256 resolution instead of 224x288), so it ends up looking a little squished. This only will become more apparent when we enter the maze!

In addition, the text is... A little odd. So! Something we neglected to mention last week is a weird thing about the DIP Switches for Pac-Man. For those not aware, basically, DIP Switches are little settings that arcade cabinet owners could configure to customize the game to an extent. Stuff like how many coins it takes to get a credit, the game's difficulty, as well as a few other miscellaneous settings.

For some reason, in Japan only, one of the DIP Switches... changes the names of the ghosts. Blinky is Macky, Pinky is Micky, Inky is Mucky, and Clyde is Mocky. These alternative names were scrapped extremely fast, especially after the game took off in the way it did, and heck--by the time the game made it over to the west by Bally Midway, if that DIP Switch were set on in their release, all that it'd do is dummy out the names into template strings of 8 letters.

...All this to say that, for some reason, this bootleg uses those names. We don't quite get it either. Maybe this was based on a specific machine that was just configured an oddly-specific way? The fact that the default score to get an extra life is 15000 instead of 10000 (and in fact, 10k is not an option) would lend credence to that hypothesis, but there's effectively zero way to be for sure. This was a bootleg made by an uncredited bootlegging team in 1981, after all.

We enter the game and GAAAAAH.

Okay, you know how when we played Galaxian, we pointed out that the game audio was super shrill? This leaves us no choice... We must deploy an audio recording. (Light headphone warning--it's not loud, but it sure is annoying!)

Yeesh. That is extremely harsh. When we said it was only good enough, nowhere is that more readily apparent than the audio of this thing. Believe us when we say it gets worse, but we just couldn't get clean audio of it. For example, the iconic "waka waka waka" sounds more like "uuEEuuEEuuEE", and the 1-up jingle is... Literally just a solid tone.

In addition, the colors are all wrong. And it's not even like they couldn't have the pallete right on a few of these, at least--the Ghosts and especially the Bonus Fruit we understand to some extent, they only have so many colors to go around after all. But two of the ghosts are red and one is distinguished by having no eyes? And neither of the red ghosts are Blinky (well, Macky in this case), who is red by default anyways? And why is the maze yellow with blue insides, anyways? The maze is simply black and blue outlines, with zero insides at all*, so we don't even know how this one happens.

...Okay, that is a slight exaggeration--there are specified inside colors, but they literally never use them in-game in the final game. So this is technically a look at something that otherwise goes unseen in the original game without a certain glitch we're saving for later.

Aside from all that, however... Despite how garish the game looks and especially sounds, the game AI seems to be entirely intact? Admittedly, we did not study this one too hard, but the ghosts do seem to be alternating between chasing and patrolling their corners, the bonus fruit only appears after eating a certain amount of dots, and the ghost AI works as you'd expect it to. Macky beelines, Micky heads to ahead of you, Mucky takes Macky's position into account before charging you, and Mocky tries to hover vaguely nearby.

Also, you know how if in the original Pac-Man, when you eat a ghost, it turns into just its eyes and returns to the ghost pen? Well, this bootleg is a little different... They lose their eyes entirely, leaving only their sheet! It honestly looks a lot more frightening than if their eyes were the only things unscathed, honestly, especially since the sheet is now a sickly pale white.

Also, here's just a weird little detail. If you get up to the top of the screen, or if a ghost ends up there, the top third of the sprite is covered up entirely by this weird... black bar. The maze looks entirely normal, but anything that goes up there is truncated. We have NO idea how this one happens this time, and we don't even have a guess like the weird interior-maze thing.

We obviously were not keen to play this to the end whatsoever--both for the sake of time and also the fact that unlike Pac-Man, there is zero Rack Test. (What that means is that one of the DIP Switches will automatically clear the stage--presumably this is for testing stuff like potential hardware issues or to progress past a Certain Glitch we once again will refrain from spilling the juicy deets on.) And, uh, no thanks! We are not sitting here for hours for a few screenshots! But we had to see if there was an intermission, and sure enough, they do include them. Gnarly!

So... Now that it's over, what next? Well, still in 1981, we've still got a bit of time in the early stages of Pac-Man Fever where Namco could not officially provide new games yet, but people, of course, wanted more Pac-Man in their lives. So without Arcade games, what else would they have?

...If you've seen the Q&A, do you remember the line when we said we had to clarify a video game is a game with some form of video elements? Yep. We've got a little bit more silliness to go through before we hit recognizable territory. And, hey, this next one has the backing of Namco themselves! See you then!

#pac man #pacman #pac-man (galaxian hardware) #all the pacs #1981 #we think you can legally declare this game to be scenecore #also happy halloween! we guess this is our trick and or treat for you

[all-the-pacs]

Hey, since Pookas make frequent appearances in later Pac-Man games, would you consider adding Dig Dug to your list of games to cover?

We're not planning on playing all the Dig Dugs, mostly out of wanting to keep this project focused and prevent ourselves from scope-creeping it into oblivion (and believe us, there's enough eligible games out there as is!) but rest assured--we do have at least a few games where we'll be seeing him and stuff from that game in the future, so it's not like you'll be seeing absolutely zero Pookas. They do, canonically, go wherever they want, after all!

(Oh, before anyone asks about Galaxian: the primary reason we chose to cover that game is because it predated Pac-Man (1980), as well as a few other lesser factors--Dig Dug came out after Pac-Man, ergo, the main crux of why Galaxian showed up is rendered moot. Besides, we're not going to be playing all the Galagas because we played Galaxian, so the two cases are a bit more similar than you might think... ;P)

#gelatinocomics #asks #all we'll say in addition in an informal addendum to this ask is that we can't decide what the STRANGEST dig dug cameo is #which is kind of saying a lot honestly.

[all-the-pacs]

I support your journey and I'm interested in reading all about it! I have nostalgia for old pac man games from playing the arcade in Pac Man World 2, so I'm looking forward to seeing you cover them all, especially the weird lesser known titles.

Glad to see someone else is excited for the lesser known titles, because believe us, we're very excited to show off the weird lesser-known titles. Weird lesser-known games has practically been our bed and butter on our main blogs for awhile, so it'll be very fun to showcase the Pac-Man offerings on that front. Not to spoil anything, but opening with Galaxian was, to be frank, the least silly it gets for silly game choices.

Also, funnily enough, we've never actually played the Pac-Man Worlds despite how iconic those evidently are, so that'll definitely be an experience. We're familiar with the most cursory information on them and that's literally it. That'll definitely be a thing!

#asks #figure we should tag asks separately so people can both find them easy and also not clog our pacs tag! #gelatinocomics

[all-the-pacs]

#2 - Pac-Man (1980)

If you put a conch shell up to your ear, you'll hear Pac-Man! Much less popular is putting your finger in your ear and scratching it to hear the sea.

Welcome to the 1980s, and for that matter, welcome to the genesis of Pac-Man himself! Yep, it only took us... 3 posts, but we're actually playing the original Pac-Man. No preamble, no Galaxian, no nothin'.

Now, the development of the original Pac-Man is something so, so many people have talked at length about and may as well have made their thesis. Stuff like how originally the four ghosts were all the same color, or maybe the maze being different, or other such details.

Now, that's way out of our jurisdiction as we're here to play the finished games and talk about them at length--however iconic they may be. So, our apologies in advance as this post sounds a lot like stuff you've most likely already heard thousands of times. But if we skipped this game on the principle of "we've already played it many, many times", it wouldn't feel right, y'know?

...So anyways we would like to remark that, yes, the flyer we showcased is to be trusted, and we are playing the Midway version today. Why not the Japanese original? Well, there's one good reason that's tangentially related to what we discussed above:

Yep, over in Japan, he started out as Puck Man, not Pac-Man. In fact, that's not the only character name difference, as the ghost gang were also called by completely different names in this version as well. Later on, however, as Pac-Man exploded in popularity worldwide, eventually Puck Man also turned into Pac-Man over in Japan as well. It's probably for the best, too, because remove just a little connecting line in that P, and you get a very different experience.

The starting screen for Pac-Man is about as basic as you get. 10 points for normal pellets. 50 points for the blinking Power Pellets (not pictured, as they were mid-blink). 4 characters in addition to Pac-Man, with their personalities (their "character", if you may) and nicknames displayed.

Blinky: The "shadow" of the group. He tries his best to be Pac-Man's shadow by simply targetting wherever he is, plain and simple. He likes the top right corner.

Pinky: The "speedy" one of the group. Always one step ahead, she's... well, aiming for a little bit ahead of where Pac-Man currently is. She likes the top left corner.

Inky: The "bashful" part of the group. As you can probably imagine, he doesn't care much for targetting Pac-Man alone, usually paying attention to where Blinky is and where Pac-Man is directly headed towards and making his move if Blinky's also in hot pursuit. Multi-faceted, that Inky. He likes the bottom right corner.

Clyde: The "pokey" member of the group. He doesn't really try to go for Pac-Man directly, more than he does try to play goalie for his own little portion of the maze, only dipping away from it to try and take a quick swing. He likes the bottom left corner.

You might notice I'm going into their behaviors in addition to their characters, and... Well, that's for a good reason. While Galaxian was content to have enemies act more-or-less the same way beyond two of them employing a buddy system and having slightly differing flight patterns, Pac-Man's true revolution was that it was the start of what we now know as AI in terms of gaming.

Before now, it was almost unheard of for enemies in a game to be able to look at the immediate state of the game, and react accordingly and consistently, with most early attempts at this being very rudimentary, or involving some form of turn-based. This was the first big game where enemies would respond to your inputs in real time, and man do we take that for granted nowadays.

Anyways, that start screen is similarly incredibly simple. Just one extra life like in Galaxian, but at least in this case, the scoring is a lot more dynamic than it is in Galaxian--so, y'know, it's actually possible to get it! (We jest, we jest. But we do honestly feel like in comparison to Galaxian's requirements for an extra life being way too high, Pac-Man's is a bit too low. Literally all it took was one run where we focused more on actually playing the game than grabbing screenshots for this project for us to get it trivially.)

We're gonna be real with you--from this point on, a lot of our observations are probably gonna be real banal sounding, because we've basically gone over a lot of the more complex stuff (albeit skimming over it, admittedly.) But on the extreme off-chance you aren't aware, yes, the gameplay of Pac-Man involves you being put in the center of a symmetrical maze with two tunnels to the left and right. You're able to go through those tunnels in order to circle back around to the other side of the maze. Across the maze are a bunch of little pellets/dots, as well as four Power Pellets/Energizer Pellets/Flashing Power Bait/Gaaaaah okay let's talk a little bit about this in a bit, but all you need to know is you need to eat all the dots in the maze to win the level. If the ghosts make contact, you die, and you lose a life.

Now, this is something we will make a pointed mention of now. At the start of Pac-Man, you start by moving left by default. Left! Keep this in mind for later. It will be very, very important. ...Not for this game, though, we'll only really start to care about starting by moving left later. Much later, depending on how things go.

Oh, and while we're here--if you eat a certain quantity of pellets, a Bonus Fruit will spawn in the center, right below the Ghost pen. Eat it for extra points--the higher the round, you'll be seeing different bonus fruits, and they'll be worth more and more points, up to 5000! Yep, much like most other Arcade games of the era, it's a simple "get the highest score" deal, with no finite "end" defined by the game itself. (If you're raising an eyebrow, don't worry, we'll get back to you.)

And of course, we couldn't talk about this game without talking about the Power Pellets/other names. Of course, with four enemies that all behave differently in hot pursuit, you need a little something to combat them to keep it fair. You can always outmaneuver them, but alternatively you can grab one of the four Power Pellets in the maze. By grabbing them, the ghosts will not only turn around immediately, but turn blue and try to avoid Pac-Man for a limited time. If you actually touch a ghost in this state, Pac-Man will gobble them up, leaving just their eyeballs to wander back to the ghost pen, where they will reappear as normal. This is already a great tactic for survival, but there's also a risk-reward element; the more ghosts you eat, the more points you get. 200 for the first, 400 for the second, 800 for the third, and 1600 for the fourth! Note this stacks upon itself, so if you manage to eat all 4 ghosts in one Power Pellet, you're looking at 3000 points right there.

...Oh, right. Real quick, let me get back to you on the whole "Power Pellet" naming confusion thing. See, early on, Arcade games weren't exactly powerful to display full-on information about the games just yet. Usually that'd be saved for being on the actual cabinet itself, on the sides of the screens. As a result, basically anything not in the actual game data itself was heavily, heavily susceptible to inconsistent names. The pellets didn't have a name in-game, so in the future they'd get all sorts of names, officially and unofficially. Let's just agree to call the small ones pellets and the large ones Power Pellets for the time being, okay?

Also, here's a detail some people don't know--the ghosts aren't just, all-the-time in pursuit according to their AI. On some occasions, usually at the very start of a round, they'll instead beeline for their respective corners. From there, they'll alternate between chasing after Pac-Man and playing goalie for their respective corners of the maze. This is part of what makes the ghosts seem so "erratic" in this game, as one moment they will directly target you, and the next moment they will disregard everything and instead head right for their respective patrol points.

You might be asking what happens if you eat all the pellets, and usually, it's pretty underwhelming. The maze blinks between blue and white, and then the maze resets anew, marking your progress by showing the Bonus Fruit of the current level on the rightmost spot.

Of course, something happens if you beat enough levels, unlike in Galaxian...

The Intermissions! If you clear certain rounds, the game will play these little skit cutscenes featuring Pac-Man and Blinky, set to a repeating jingle. After this, the game starts another round as you'd expect it to. The first intermission is fairly standard, with nothing much to say on it.

The second intermission, however... Is perhaps a little confusing. Maybe another one will clear things up?

Oh! While we're over here, we might as well bring this up. The first few bonus fruit are indeed fruit--Cherries, Strawberries, Oranges, Apples, then Melons--but then after those, the bonus fruit get a little more... esoteric. For example, after melons are the Flagship from Galaxian! What do you suppose that tastes like, anyways? Not pictures is that after this is a Bell, and then after that is a Key. As in, like, a standard key for a padlock! After the key, there's no change in both visuals and point values, it's just keys for days. This is also exactly why we even bothered talking about Galaxian, by the way.

As for that last intermission...

...Well then! Talk about a good ol' case of early installment weirdness, huh?

Okay, it's worth mentioning that originally, Namco and Bally Midway very insistently referred to the Ghost gang as "Monsters". Not Ghosts. Presumably, this was to cover the truth all along that the ghosts... Weren't ghosts at all! Instead, they had these weird slug designs.

However, uh, very few people actually called them monsters. People were content to just call them ghosts because, well, it moves like a ghost, it looks like a ghost, it makes a weird little "wheww-wheww" like a ghost might, they were ghosts! It seems like this concept of them secretly being these weird slug-like creatures was scrapped very early on, as we think the idea that they are very specifically ghosts crops up as early as the mid-80s--and when they did that, Namco never looked back. They didn't quite give up on the name "Monsters" so soon, and as we'll see in a bit, this didn't stop them from allowing some strange non-ghostly depictions of these guys very early on, but this angle definitely didn't last very long. Quite funny, seeing as this is basically as close to a "plot twist" the game has to offer!

Now, some of you who are aware of glitches in video games might've heard us mention the game goes on forever and hold contention with that. And to be truthful--there is, indeed, a glitch that prevents the game from lasting forever. But we've made the executive decision to discuss that at a later date. There's two reasons for that:

There's something much, much later down the road that expressly relies on knowing about this glitch anyways.

This post is going on long enough, and we think discussion of that belongs in its own post, so it can have the gravitas it deserves.

So, for the time being, we wait on it. Sorry!

...Besides, next time, we've got something much sillier. Believe it or not, this is the only 1980 game they released. Really! It took a moment for Pac-Man to really simmer and take off, and so join us next time for the start of 1981. And, uh... Not to spoil anything, but you know how we said we only brought up Galaxian because of this game? Weeeell... We might've lied a little bit...

Oh yeah. Those familiar with bootlegs might have just had a siren go off in their brain, and we're goin' there. We're already invoking our "notable bootlegs are fine" stipulation. Whether you're familiar or not, however, we'll be seein' you around!

#all the pacs #pac man #pacman #1980 #pac-man #should we tag these with hyphens we're realizing

[all-the-pacs]

#1 - Galaxian (1979) (Yes, Actually)

What the? You said you'd be playing all the Pacs! But that's clearly Galaxian! What gives?! Well, if you'll just sit down, you'll understand a bit...

So... Technicality is a funny thing. One moment you're sitting down to play every single Pac-Man game you can think of in chronological order, and the next thing you know, you're playing a game before Pac-Man chronologically released. Such is the power of highly-specific iconography that would later come to be heavily associated with the series actually appearing in a game before it even existed!

So. Galaxian. You've probably heard of it if you've heard of video games before--or at the very least, you've heard of its older brother, Galaga. While the latter doesn't meet the requirements to be a Pac (and quite frankly, this game almost didn't), there's juuust enough here that makes us raise an eyebrow and say, "this'll do."

What's this? Why, at the top of the "Score Advance Table" is none other than... The word "Convoy"! And below that and to the left is none other than the Galaxian Flagship. On the off-chance you've never gotten far enough in Pac-Man before, or just never used his Neutral B in Smash, that there alien flagship was effectively Namco's de-facto mascot before Pac-Man really shook things up for them. As a result, it got a cameo in the first Pac-Man game and has been closely orbiting Pac-Man ever since!

Also, wait, the Galaxians are the heroes and we're just fighting aliens? That's definitely strange, seeing as in Galaga the enemies are manned by the "Boss Galaga", which seems to imply the alternative.

Though, not as strange as the fact your ship is also called a... Galaxip. Just rolls off the tongue there.

Okay, one thing that's not apparent in these still images is that this game is shrill. Like, very high-pitched and very squeaky. Especially compared to many other early Arcade games, it sticks out like a sore thumb in just how dang loud this game is. Anyways, the standard game loop of Galaxian aren't really anything to write home about--and they weren't even when the game first released. Space Invaders had already existed for some time, after all.

No, Galaxian stood out for a few other reasons. For one, as that cyan alien is kindly demonstrating, the aliens don't just sit there and take your fire, only occasionally firing back. No, when an alien wants to fire back, it descends from formation to both shoot at you and also try and take a swing at you--contact damage will kill you! Secondly, and why those Flagships are so important and why this game was as revolutionary as it was...

Yep, the enemies actively employ the buddy system. Flagships will bring up to 2 Red Aliens with them at a time, descending upon you with not only increased firepower, but the red aliens will actually serve as a meat(? spacecraft?) shield for the Flagship, tanking shots themselves to prevent you from getting a solid shot in.

They do a good job, evidently, because wow we stink at Galaxian. We'd like to think we're okay enough at video games--we've got a few challenge runs of games much more complex than this under our belt--but it just goes to show that sometimes the simplest things to grasp can totally kick you in the shins.

In addition, however, there's one last detail; should there only be a few aliens left standing, they'll enter a sort of panic mode and, instead of returning to their spot in formation, they will gladly charge you endlessly. Forever, if necessary! Until either you shoot them down or they take you out, they will endlessly circle from the top to the bottom, wrapping back around and occasionally firing at you.

So, let's say you brave the trials that the Flagship ship poises, and properly gun it down in spite of its bodyguards. The game's actually equipped to handle various possibilities and reward you accordingly for how "dangerous" the game deemed it. The factors--as far as we could tell--are if the Flagship died last, and how many Red Aliens guarding it you took out. Pictured is the result of gunning down the maximum two red aliens guarding a Flagship, before gunning the Flagship itself down. This resulted in 800 points, the maximum amount you can get out of a Flagship! It's worth mentioning you only have one bullet per round, so your aim needs to be pretty good to get this. One miss and that thing will gladly rocket to the other end of the screen, leaving you a sitting duck while the aliens get to circle back unscathed.

You may be wondering if anything unique happens if you clear the board of all aliens. Does the game end? Are the Galaxians safe from the intergalactic conflict they've found themselves in? Do the aliens do a little dance?

Nope, the round simply resets and a new set of aliens shows up. You actually get a little indicator of how many rounds you've cleared in the bottom right, however--looking it up, the game will actually abbreviate the flags if you clear 10 rounds of this. Can you imagine 10 rounds of pure, unaltered Galaxian? Too much for us, at least.

Still, this was a fun time, and we're glad we got to sit down and warm up to this project with this game. Get our proverbial feet wet, and all that. But let's be real here--you didn't come here for the Flagship. You're here for a different guy entirely.

Never you mind, we getcha, and we hear ya loud and clear. And no fake-outs next time; we're playin' the original Pac-Man. See ya whenever we get around to that one!

#all the pacs #pac man #pacman #1979 #galaxian #one of our favorite bits is when a series of games technically starts with a game seemingly unrelated #like how in raocow's ill-fated all the sonics it turned out Flicky was the first game to meet his definitions #or how every mario game technically ties directly back to Donkey Kong. a game not named after mario at all #we hope we did this bit justice

[all-the-pacs]

#0 - We intend to play every single Pac-Man game in chronological order

Well, you read the title, you know exactly what you're getting into here. Allow us to re-iterate our thesis in a bit more detail, however:

What we intend to do with this blog is a sort of "expedition" of sorts as we play every single Pac-Man game, in chronological order. Why are we doing this? Well, a few reasons:

As you can imagine, we've been life-time fans of Pac-Man, ever since learning of the games from rinkydink old Plug & Plays from the early 2000s. Despite this, and despite Pac-Man being our eternal Smash Bros. main, we've never actually sat down and played a vast majority of his library.

We love weird and obscure games, and the Pac-Man series is home to an absolute wealth of those.

We're morbidly curious just how deep this Pac-Man rabbit hole goes, especially since he has such a vast coverage of genres and styles that all seem to be at odds with one another. (Seriously, ask any two people what they like about Pac-Man and there's a good chance their answers will vastly differ!)

Last, but not least, we're bored. And also, it's fun. We love committing to silly bits!

(Psst! Under the read-more is a tiny bit more preamble!)

First of all, hello! I'm putting the juicy deets under read-mores to prevent just flooding the tags with these things.

...So, originally, we intended to make this a video project--we'd do this as sort of a recorded Let's Play, and we'd talk about the games as we go along. Except... It turns out we kinda suck at doing that. We prefer to share our thoughts after the fact, and most of the time we simply focus on playing the game first and foremost, and talking with present friends about total nonsense rather than talking about the game. There's nothing wrong with that, mind you, but it definitely is at-odds with our analytical styles we're trying to aim for!

So... Instead of that, we've come up with a different plan. We intend to play every single game, and for every play session we undertake, we will give a textual recap of our experience and report back with our findings. It's like reading a Captain's Log of our voyage, but on the weB!

Anyways, we think that's enough. We don't have a set schedule for these at the moment, we're just going to be posting these as we go along. Join us next time, when we start by. Uh. Not actually playing a Pac-Man game as our first one--yeah, strap in folks, we're about to get very silly, very fast.

#all the pacs #pac-man #pacman #no year #you have no idea how painful it was to edit the blog theme with no posts except a placeholder ask we sent ourselves BTW. #speaking of which we're still fine-tuning said theme so we're SO sorry if it kinda looks like a gaudy mess atm!