Pac-Man Begins
Pac-Man
That's the game that started it all for me. I played the arcade game religiously when I was a wee lad. That was way back in 1980. Damn that game is still bitchin'. It's Shigeru Miyamoto's favourite game of all time. Now that's the greatest compliment of all.
The eventual Atari 2600 adaptation appeared a couple years latter in 82' and yeah it was crap. Poor old Tod Frye was ordered by Atari to deliver a 4k rom port in a number of weeks. The guy did a decent job with the limited amount of time and space. Thanks to the game's poor sales and critical response, Atari shutdown 4k development and delivered a beautiful 16k Ms. Pac-Man adaptation. Now that was awesome stuff.
I played my Coleco Pac-Man tabletop non-stop. Watched the cartoon show while eating a big bowl of Pac-Man cereal with my Pac-Man jammies on. Oh the joyful memories. Luckily, video game's first "character" continues forward.
There are only a few videogame characters who have continued to survive and thrive beyond the 1980's. Pac-Man and Mario are among the few and proud. For me it was Pac-Man. For Tyler, it was Donkey Kong and that little guy named Mario who made the ColecoVision rock hard.
It's great to see Pac-Man still delivering the goods, especially on the Nintendo DS. Two outstanding titles have hit the portable in the form of Pac-Pix and Pac'n Roll. Both games make brilliant use of the touch screen ability. It looks like his adventures aren't stopping there either; the NDS is getting a pretty sweet version of Pac-Man World 3 as well. Here are some vids of the NDS version thanks to IGN - http://media.ds.ign.com/media/776/776285/vids_1.html
So he's still kickin' it. I just played a great demo of Pac-Man World 3 on the X-Box and all I can do is rave about it. The Pac-Man World series isn't trying to redefine the platform genre or introduce surprising new gimmicks or crap. Nope. What you get are solid level designs and joyful gaming experiences. When I play Pac-Man World, it's just plain fun. I'm glad to report that PW3 continues the tradition.
The latest adventure looks beautiful, like an animated Pixar film. The game isn't striving to look "real". Instead it strives to look animated and very cartoony. Lighting and shadows look awesome. The characters and environments are sweet. Finally, Pac-Man has a voice. It's like an interactive Pixar film than just a videogame experience. That's what I like. The demo I played featured a huge level of exploration and Pac-Man delights, it was pretty overwhelming at first because I didn't expect this for the little yellow guy. By the way, you also get to finally play as the Ghosts with all their spooky shenanigans in tact. As you can tell from my brief description of the demo, I had a blast playing it and I'm looking forward to the final product.
Pac-Man was huge in 1980. You have to remember that it was the first game to bring arcade/video gaming into the mainstream. Men and women of all ages played the game in delight. It was the first multimedia explosion for the industry. There was of course the above-mentioned animated series and cereal plus clothes, toys, candy, ect.
Today, he's still going strong. You can play Pac-Man on your home console or portable game machine. You can play him on your cell phone or palm pilot. Heck if you don't even have any of those you can pick yourself up a TV Plug and Play unit and relive those classic arcade memories once again.
So yo' here's to great memories and happy future ones.
Happy 25th Anniversary little guy!
P.S. - Here's a link to little Pac-Man fan site I've started - http://1980pacman.tripod.com/
Enjoy!
That's the game that started it all for me. I played the arcade game religiously when I was a wee lad. That was way back in 1980. Damn that game is still bitchin'. It's Shigeru Miyamoto's favourite game of all time. Now that's the greatest compliment of all.
The eventual Atari 2600 adaptation appeared a couple years latter in 82' and yeah it was crap. Poor old Tod Frye was ordered by Atari to deliver a 4k rom port in a number of weeks. The guy did a decent job with the limited amount of time and space. Thanks to the game's poor sales and critical response, Atari shutdown 4k development and delivered a beautiful 16k Ms. Pac-Man adaptation. Now that was awesome stuff.
I played my Coleco Pac-Man tabletop non-stop. Watched the cartoon show while eating a big bowl of Pac-Man cereal with my Pac-Man jammies on. Oh the joyful memories. Luckily, video game's first "character" continues forward.
There are only a few videogame characters who have continued to survive and thrive beyond the 1980's. Pac-Man and Mario are among the few and proud. For me it was Pac-Man. For Tyler, it was Donkey Kong and that little guy named Mario who made the ColecoVision rock hard.
It's great to see Pac-Man still delivering the goods, especially on the Nintendo DS. Two outstanding titles have hit the portable in the form of Pac-Pix and Pac'n Roll. Both games make brilliant use of the touch screen ability. It looks like his adventures aren't stopping there either; the NDS is getting a pretty sweet version of Pac-Man World 3 as well. Here are some vids of the NDS version thanks to IGN - http://media.ds.ign.com/media/776/776285/vids_1.html
So he's still kickin' it. I just played a great demo of Pac-Man World 3 on the X-Box and all I can do is rave about it. The Pac-Man World series isn't trying to redefine the platform genre or introduce surprising new gimmicks or crap. Nope. What you get are solid level designs and joyful gaming experiences. When I play Pac-Man World, it's just plain fun. I'm glad to report that PW3 continues the tradition.
The latest adventure looks beautiful, like an animated Pixar film. The game isn't striving to look "real". Instead it strives to look animated and very cartoony. Lighting and shadows look awesome. The characters and environments are sweet. Finally, Pac-Man has a voice. It's like an interactive Pixar film than just a videogame experience. That's what I like. The demo I played featured a huge level of exploration and Pac-Man delights, it was pretty overwhelming at first because I didn't expect this for the little yellow guy. By the way, you also get to finally play as the Ghosts with all their spooky shenanigans in tact. As you can tell from my brief description of the demo, I had a blast playing it and I'm looking forward to the final product.
Pac-Man was huge in 1980. You have to remember that it was the first game to bring arcade/video gaming into the mainstream. Men and women of all ages played the game in delight. It was the first multimedia explosion for the industry. There was of course the above-mentioned animated series and cereal plus clothes, toys, candy, ect.
Today, he's still going strong. You can play Pac-Man on your home console or portable game machine. You can play him on your cell phone or palm pilot. Heck if you don't even have any of those you can pick yourself up a TV Plug and Play unit and relive those classic arcade memories once again.
So yo' here's to great memories and happy future ones.
Happy 25th Anniversary little guy!
P.S. - Here's a link to little Pac-Man fan site I've started - http://1980pacman.tripod.com/
Enjoy!
posted by Kelley at 9:59 PM
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