Title: Pac-Man / PuckMan / Ghost Muncher / Hangly-Man / New Puck-X

Manufacturer: Namco

Year: 1980

Hardware:

Main Processors: Z80 (8-bit; 3 MHz)

Sound Hardware: Custom (Namco)

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Description

The all-time classic maze game where the character that the game was named after has to eat all the dots in a maze to
advance to the next one. There is the occasional fruit that shows up that is worth a certain amount of points. The main
enemies are the ghosts that chase after Pac-Man that are vulnerable only for a short time after Pac-Man eats a pill.
There are many bootlegs of this game, one which has hearts instead of dots, and others like the one that runs on the
same hardware as Galaxian which has different colors and is similar to Ghost Muncher, another Pac-Man clone. The
version with the hearts is more difficult since there are narrower spots in the mazes where the player has to turn at just
the right time or else Pac-Man will keep going in the previous direction. According to MAME, Piranha is another clone of
Pac-Man, but the gameplay is so different, that there is a separate profile in the database.

The following is quoted from Alliance Corporation Game History Database Revision 2 (also known as the MAME history.dat file):

"The name Pacman is derived from the Japanese slang word "paku-paku", which means "to eat". The game was called "Puckman" in Japan, but due to American's predilection with changing words to vulgarities by scratching part of the word off (Puck to...well, you know), it was changed to Pacman.

To give the game some tension, some clever AI was programmed  into the game. The ghosts  would group up, attack the player, then disperse. Each ghost had its own AI. Blinky chases Pacman, Pinky is positioned a few dots in front of Pacman's mouth. The others move randomly.

The game took 1 1/2 years to complete, and had five people on its team.

Pacman is the greatest selling arcade game of all time, and is arguably the most well-known video character. It had its own cartoon, lunch box, board game, and hundreds of other products. Pacman was also the first game to have a "character", and changed the face video games forever.

Pacman was the first video game to be as equally popular to women as it was with men."

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Emulation Status

Emulators: MAME

Playable: Yes

Sound: Yes

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Screenshots

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