It it’s Monday, it must be another video game retromeme:
Monday Meme: A Simple Plan
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Category Archives: pac-man
Monday Meme: A Pac of Flowers
If it’s Monday, it must be another video game retromeme:
via Facebook page The Secret to Humor is Surprise
The Gravity of Not Pacman
Not Pacman, by Maurice Ltd., is an interesting take on the venerable dot eater formula. It resembles the classic game, appropriates the sounds, but here the play is the thing. Here, you don’t play by moving Pac around directly, but spin the maze in which he and his dreaded ghost antagonists reside. Gravity does the rest, and the characters roll around while you try to keep our yellow hero from tumbling into an enemy.
There are a few control options, including using joysticks or even a steering wheel if you have one, but I find I like the mouse option the best, spinning the maze clockwise and counter-clockwise by moving the mouse right or left.
What the game is really crying out for, of course, is a tablet version that uses accelerometer sensors to let you tilt the device to roll Pac-Man around. Unfortunately, we only have Windows, OSX and Linux versions so far. Also, you can only finish the maze once and then the game records your points and time taken to finish, then resets itself, so the goal currently is to finish in the fastest time. But hey, it’s free! You can download the different versions of Not Pacman here at stabyourself.net.
Here’s our video of gameplay using a mouse in the OSX version:
As always, for more information on the history of Pac-Man, consult your local Dot Eaters entry.
Monday Meme: Pac-Man Vs. Mario
If it’s Monday, it must be another video game retromeme:
Monday Meme: The Pac-inator
Monday Meme: Pac-Man Meets PONG
It it’s Monday, it must be another Retromeme:
The 12 Video Games of Christmas: Ms. Pac Man for iOS
The 12 Video Games of Christmas continues with Ms. Pacman for iOS.
Now, this one was before my time but I have actually played an arcade cabinet of this before. I can remember playing this and Operation Wolf at an old boardwalk arcade when I used to live in the UK. I was pretty young so I had to stand on a milk crate to play them.
I remember having a great time with this because at its core the game is classic Pac Man action. It’s all here; the classic gameplay is replicated in style with a neat cabinet style controller interface down the bottom of the screen and faithfully recreated gameplay. If you’ve ever played the game before and are wondering just what the difference between the two games is here is the short version: Ms. Pac Man features redesigned mazes in four different styles, moving fruits, random ghost movement making predicting their movements a lot more challenging and new music and sound effects.
There is a reason these arcade games were so popular (and let me tell you, Ms. Pac Man was one of the most popular arcade games of all time!) and if you want to get in on the arcade action you can drop some iTunes credit here and download the game to your iOS device.
Were you addicted to pellets back in the day? Share your stories of obsessive Ms. Pac Man playing in the comments section. No intervention required.
The 12 Video Games of Christmas: Pac-Man for iPad.
Yellow ornaments hang from the tree in today’s The 12 Video Games of Christmas. Wait, that one is eating the tinsel! Darn you, Pac-Man!
Made by Namco and selling for $4.99 in the App Store, this round of Pac-Man is for the iPad only. It definitely feels like the arcade game, and has some good options for controlling our yellow hero. Using the virtual joystick feels a bit logey, but an option to move Pac around the maze by swiping your finger to make him turn feels surprisingly responsive. What’s really neat, however, is the accelerometer control scheme, where you tilt the iPad to move the character, kind of rolling him around the maze like in a marble-roll game such as Labyrinth. It feels pretty cool and physical, although not particularly precise. All of these control methods come included with the free Lite version; if you want to really get the arcade controller experience by hooking the game up to the mini-arcade cabinet iCade, you’ll need to pay for the full version of the app.
Another interesting addition to the formula is the ability to continue your game where you left off after losing your last man, by spending Namco coins, which, of course, you can purchase with real cash. This particular freemium endeavour is not so obnoxious as others you find in the app store, as you get an awful lot of the program in the free version.
Pac-Man for iPad can be gobbled up at the iTunes App Store. Bon appétit!
Monday Meme: Yellow Fury
Video Games Evolve
I’ve recently hammered out four new videos in my Video Games Evolved series. I pay tribute to Bump ‘N’ Jump, Pac-Man, Dig Dug and Zaxxon.
Usually I do a run-through with the game as practice and then start recording gameplay footage, but of course with the arcade version of Zaxxon it took maybe 5 plays before I could survive long enough to get useable footage because the game is so bloody hard. The Atari and Intellivision versions are the most dramatic departures from the arcade, at least graphically. Sure, you can understand why the limitations of these two warhorses require a scale-back from the cool isometric pseudo-3D of the original, but still…. belch. That ain’t Zaxxon. They come off more as a sparse River Raid, without the river.
One game where the INTY comes off surprisingly best is its Bump ‘N’ Jump port. Usually the ColecoVision runs away with these arcade translations, but here, the Intellivision definitely captures the look and tone of the original arcade better than the CV. Heck, even the 2600 version holds its own. Will wonders never cease?