Pac-Man?

[parrothead]

When Namco introduced Pac-Land into the arcades, they preceded Nintendo's own Super Mario Bros. as one of the earliest side-scrollers in history. And Pac-Land was no slouch either, featuring parallax scrolling for some of the background elements, an impressive feat that would not become common place until the 16-bit console era began much later.

Pac-Land's concept was extremely novel for its time. Unfortunately, despite it's dazzling use of colors and animation, the game play falls a little flat. There are a few secrets to discover here and there, but it lacks the discovery element that made Super Mario Bros. much more successful. In the end, Pac-Land begins to feel like an obstacle course through repeated areas with ever increasing difficulty, as opposed to feeling like you're exploring new territory with each new level. And the drastic departure from the original Pac-Man maze formula left many fans scratching their heads. Still, Pac-Land developed a solid fan base, and became the inspiration for many of Pac-Man's later adventures to come, including Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures and the ones you mentioned, Man-Frog.

[Manspeed]

Yeah Pac-Land's development history is great and all Parrot but I seriously doubt anybody wants any more Pac-platformers, much less a remake of Pac-Land.

[Shrikeswind]

Plus, if you want to remake innovative white-noise, you'd have to make it innovative again, but not enough to be any more than white-noise. Basically, you have to be an inventor who gets Gary Oak'd. Twice.

[Fryguy64]

My introduction to the series was actually the Amiga port of Pac-Mania, which I really quite enjoyed back in the day.

The general consensus is that Pac-Man was a revolution at the time of its release, but Ms. Pac-Man was a better edition of the game. Nowadays, the Pac-Man Championship Edition is considered to be the logical expansion of the game's original concept (much how Space Invaders Extreme expands on the original concept of that game).

Fact is, like many early videogame characters, there have been various attempts to revive the original concept as well as infiltrate other genres for further development of characters. Pac-Man's early maze game days are only part of the story - after porting the arcade games, Namco more-or-less abandoned Pac-Man entirely until the arrival of the Playstation. Nevertheless, it'll be interesting to see how many of these games people are familiar with, and how many might provide the right (or indeed wrong) way to do a sequel.

There's the maze games:
Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Jr. Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man, Pac-Mania, Pac-Man: Adventures in Time, Ms. Pac-Man: Maze Madness, Pac-Man VS., Pac-Man Championship Edition

Then there's the 2D platformers:
Pac-Land (1985), Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures (1994),

Then there's the 3D platformers:
Pac-Man World, Pac-Man World 2, Pac-Man World 3

Then there's the oddballs:
Pac-In-Time (remake of Fury of the Furries), Pac-Man Fever (party game), Pac-Man All-Stars (multiplayer dot-eating but no mazes), Pac-Man Pinball Advance, Pac-Pix, Pac 'n Roll, Pac-Man World Rally

(Note: It doesn't look like MobyGames has a page for the GBA Pac-Man World games, which kind of fall halfway between the 2D and 3D Pac-Man games).

There's also a load more coin-op games that aren't on this list, which inspired much of the cast that appeared in the later platformers. But as you can see, there's a huge variety of Pac-Man games out there. He's not forgotten, and the fact there are three Pac-Man World games suggests that the sales are good enough to keep making sequels.

If you're bothered, have a look, read the reviews and even try to play the games. The maze game has been given a lot of love and attention in the last few years, and the platformers were always OK but never outstanding. And check out that list of spin-offs! If you want to give Pac-Man some love, perhaps work out which areas would help you achieve this.

After all... you can't fix something if you don't even look at it.

[Manspeed]

I actually rather like Pac-In-Time in spite of it being a remake. And for the record, Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures really isn't a platformer so much as an interactive cartoon-type thing.

[Nester the Lark]

Jan 20, 2010 11:38:39 GMT -5 Manspeed said:

I actually rather like Pac-In-Time in spite of it being a remake. And for the record, Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures really isn't a platformer so much as an interactive cartoon-type thing.

Yeah, I was going to say that Pac-man 2 is more like Lemmings, but with only one Lemming, and he's dumb as a brick.

It's also interesting to note that Namco actually does not own the rights to Jr. Pac-man. That's why it has never appeared on any Namco compilations. It was created by the same guys that made Ms. Pac-man and was distributed by Bally/Midway, but Namco wasn't interested in purchasing the rights to it at the time.

[Game Guru]

Actually, Namco does own Jr. Pac-Man. They just hated all the Pac-Man games from that era not done in house, which was also the reason why they took publishing rights away from Midway. This leaves Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man, and Pac & Pal as being the games Namco reinterates from that era. The only exception to this is Ms. Pac-Man, which gets an out for being... Well, Ms. Pac-Man, the best-selling and most popular of the Pac-Man games. Namco even still refuses to list Ms. Pac-Man in its official archives!

[Nester the Lark]

Actually, that's kind of depressing to know, because I thought that Jr. Pac-man was a natural evolution of the progress from Ms. Pac-man, and therefore the proper sequel. (Even tho it wasn't nearly as successful, but that's probably because it was released during the crash.)

So, once again, it comes down to hubris.

[Manspeed]

Yeah, the unlicensed Bally-Midway sequels made during that era were pretty good. Jr. Pac-Man is really difficult, and I've always wanted to try that Baby Pac-Man pinball machine thingy.

I'm pretty sure Namco decided give the proverbial finger to Bally-Midway by making their own version of Jr. Pac-Man called "Pac Jr." and including it amongst the other arcade games in Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures. The character Pac Jr. even continues to appear to this day, along with other characters surprisingly based on the Bally-Midway games such as Prof. Pac.

[Koopaul]

Yes Fryguy I have played all the Pac-Man World games as well as other titles.

I'm just wondering why all the latest Pac-Man games are being handled by Americans rather than the Japanese. The series seems to get this more and more Western feel to it rather than that neutral mesh between the two. Look at this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_Iw5ABt4II

Do those new characters look like they belong in the Pac-Man universe?

[Koopaul]

Oh bump for something weird...

gonintendo.com/viewstory.php?id=112209

Pac-Man Pizza Parlor?

[Fryguy64]

Sounds like a potential WiiWare or DSi Ware game in the vein of Pac-Pix. I can see the slice cut out already...

[Game Guru]

Jan 21, 2010 20:29:22 GMT -5 Koopaul said:

Yes Fryguy I have played all the Pac-Man World games as well as other titles.

I'm just wondering why all the latest Pac-Man games are being handled by Americans rather than the Japanese. The series seems to get this more and more Western feel to it rather than that neutral mesh between the two. Look at this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_Iw5ABt4II

Do those new characters look like they belong in the Pac-Man universe?

First, they are actually from the UK, and second, this seems limited to the Third World game, World Rally, and a few Hasbro games from when they owned Atari and were pimping Centipede and Pong on the PS1. Of the more recent games, Pac-Pix and Pac 'N Roll were made by Namco themselves... Pac-Man CE was made by the original creator of Pac-Man... and Pac-Man Vs. was made by Nintendo's own Shigeru Miyamoto.

Oh and to clarify how Namco obtained the rights to the Midway made Pac-Man games, it goes a bit like this:

GCC: We own Ms. Pac-Man! You guys modified Crazy Otto!

Midway: We own Ms. Pac-Man! You guys sold us the rights to Crazy Otto.

Namco: We own Pac-Man! You two guys made a bootleg of it!

GCC & Midway: You own Ms. Pac-Man.

Namco: Indeed, we do.

[parrothead]

*bump*

Go to Google to celebrate the franchise's 30th Anniversary:

www.google.com/

See also Game Center CX host Shinya Arino's interview with Pac-Man's creator, Toru Iwatani:

pacman.com/en/events/interview-1-vol-1-pac-man-creator-toru-iwatani

[Nester the Lark]

It also seems that Namco is getting ready to unveil Pac-man Reborn at E3. I bet this is the game that Hirokazu Yasuhara has been working on.