Pac-Man (1980)

An iconic arcade game from my childhood that is still super fun and addicting to this day! Pac-Man is a really easy game to just pick up and play but can be tough to Master. It's also spawned a movie and a T.V Show (I think) as well as multiple spin off titles that shake up the franchise and has been released on just about every device that you can play games on.

Curious to learn more information from behind the curtain of Pac-Man? This video gives 5 Extra Facts about Pac-Man you probably don't know!

Look: 7/10 The colors and nostalgia are great, but I can't claim to find them especially great.

Sound: 7/10 Likewise, the nostalgia is there, and they're obviously fun arcade sounds--but nothing striking.

Play: 7/10 Addictive, nostalgic, simple. The one map with difficulty simply increasing/vulnerability time decreasing for the enemies makes the game seem overrated when compared to its contemporaries Phoenix and Berzerk. Proud of my score despite my being pretty bad at arcade games ha.

Feel: 8/10 Just plain ol fun. I'm not the type who could play this for hours and spend tons of money, also never really was one to sit and watch my cousin (who was amazing at it) play it for very long. It just isn't that striking of a game to me. But it's undeniably fun and solid.

Attachment: 7/10 I will be adding its sequels to my backlog, but doubt I will regularly return to this game or anything. If somehow I meet someone who hasn't heard of it or played it, lol, then I suppose I would! Judging by these last few days, it seems I might need to go back through and add more arcade games especially from 80s cuz I skipped most of them and I'm realizing I like them more than I thought, especially the Head On and Space Invaders derivatives like pacman and phoenix so far.

There Is something about the sounds of pacman munching on dots and ghosts that make you not want to put the game down no matter how bad you are at the game, you find yourself saying "Okay one more game" and then one more game turns Into 10 or so.

This game still holds up on NES or wherever you choose to play, pacman Is truely an ageless game.

Need to try this on MAME again. Its been a very long time since I played on of those sitddown table cabinets to play the classic pacman. This week, I have been playing some 5200 and 7800 stuff as well as 800 versions of Berzerk, And like the improvements. I figure pacman is in that camp but like most the Arcade emulation is the only definitive version! But still never really enjoyed this game. and the 2600 version was always ugly even among 2600 standards

It feels sinful to talk trash about this game. lol.

“Remember kid, there’s heroes and there’s legends. Heroes get remembered, but legends never die.”

Mr. Masaya Nakamura, known as “the Father of Pac-Man”, has passed on at the age of 91. He is remembered as a pioneer of the gaming industry and founder of Namco, and in remembering him I thought we’d time travel back to the early days of neon game centers and musky arcades for a look at a true legend: Pac-Man. Video games have never been the same since.pacman.png

Pac-Man was created by game designer Toru Iwatani (Pole Position, Libble Rabble) and developed by Nakamura’s company, Namco (short for Nakamura Amusement Machine Manufacturing Company). It was distributed in North America by Midway.

But whence cometh the Pac-Man? The story goes that his creators got the idea at a pizza parlor by looking at a pie with a single piece missing, though it’s possible this isn’t at all true. Also, the character almost ended up with the name “Puck-Man” in the US, after his hockey puck resemblance, though they wisely decided against it given the all-American pastime of using strong language. They didn’t want to risk the arcade machines being vandalized by young teens thinking they were being crudely clever.

In Japan, the gluttonous protagonist is called “Pakkuman”, from the Japanese onomatopoeia paku-paku which is the sound of the mouth moving when eating or chewing. It’s the equivalent of “Om Nom Nom”. You could call him “Omnomnom-Man”. But that’s stupid. With paku-paku at his roots, it was easier just to go with Pac-Man for North America and the rest of the world.

Upon its release, Pac-Man was widely popular. Insanely popular. It attracted more players than anything else had before it. Americans dropping billions of quarters into arcade machines just in 1981 (Pac-Man’s first full year in North America) was unprecedented, and Pac-Man was at the forefront of that craze since 1980. He redefined the arcades.

Click here for the full article... https://thewellredmage.wordpress.com/2017/02/01/pac-man/