1982: Pac-Man Gnaws at Popular Culture

1982: Pac-Man Plus
System: Arcade
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco

In dimly lit arcades around the world, Pac-Man Plus was introduced. The gameplay remained pretty much the same - run, eat, flee, power up, hunt, etc. - except for a few random effects thrown in by Namco to break up the use of patterns to defeat the game. Among other

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differences, this time around, power pellets didn't guarantee a temporary reprieve from attacking ghosts. While sometimes the ghosts would turn blue and run away, sometimes the ghoulish attackers would remain in their original form. Consuming bonus fruits was now a risky undertaking: There was no telling what would happen when they were eaten - often the ghosts would turn blue but then turn invisible so they couldn't be chased, or the maze itself would become invisible.

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Pac-Man Plus's random feature made it much harder than its predecessor, and the game never really caught on because of this. But Namco had learned its lesson.

Out of arcades, Pac-Man was enjoying worldwide fame. Hanna-Barbera made a Saturday-morning kids cartoon based on Mr. Chomp, simply entitled, The Pac-Man Show. The cartoon was an instant success and ran for two seasons.

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1982: Ms. Pac-Man
Systems: Arcade
Developer: Midway
Publisher: Midway

Game developers faced the same problems back in the 1980s that they do today: How do we get women to play our games? After all, if only males are playing, then 50 percent of the entire population isn't spending quarters on arcade titles. This must be stopped. Drastic times call for drastic measures.

Enter the world's first digital interactive feminist, Ms. Pac-Man. Ms. Pac-Man was moderately successful at luring fresh blood into dark arcades, but where it really succeeded was in its increased humanness. The lipstick, bow tie, and mole made Ms. Pac-Man resemble

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a human face much more than her husband did, and players flocked to her because of it. The off-yellow ghost Clyde was renamed Sue, giving Ms. Pac-Man an enemy of her own gender to fear and then destroy. Aside from a few minor musical changes, the game was essentially the same. Fruit was much harder to eat this time around, being constantly on the run with a satisfying "bum bum bum..." Many players prefer Ms. Pac-Man to the original, and it's much more commonly found in arcades or convenience stores than the inceptive Pac-Man.

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1982: Ms. Pac-Man
Platform: Atari 2600
Developer: Atari
Publisher: Atari

With double the amount of memory in this cartridge than in the original Atari title (a whopping 8K), Ms. Pac-Man's 2600 conversion was much closer to the arcade title than the Pac-Man conversion. Sadly, this title still didn't come within ten miles of truly resembling the arcade game. Though the sound effects were better, the musical themes were recognizable, and the fruit

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actually resembled what it was supposed to be instead of generic yellow-brown squares, Ms. Pac-Man for the 2600 was still a far cry from what gamers fell in love with. But it did represent a substantial improvement, and graphics on the whole were cleaner. Ms. Pac-Man for the 2600 was much more enjoyable than the original arcade-to-home-console disaster. But, like the original Atari 2600 Pac-Man, players still became bored rather quickly with the lackluster sound and visuals.

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1982: Pac-Man
Platform: Atari 5200
Developer: Atari
Publisher: Atari

A year after Pac-Man hit homes on the Atari 2600, the Atari 5200 machine came out with its own improved version of Pac-Man. The graphics were cleaner, the sounds were clearer, and gamers all over North America wanted it. Unfortunately, the 5200 "super system" was also arguably the first console to date a previous one, and many parents refused to buy it for their children, having just purchased the 2600 the year before. Our parents didn't understand how much we salivated at the better version, so most of us older gamers were just forced to watch as our previously Atari-less friends leapfrogged us with the new version. Life just wasn't fair.

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1982: Super Pac-Man
Platform: Arcade
Developer: Midway
Publisher: Midway

Super Pac-Man represented a radical departure from the classic Pac-Man gameplay. Sure, the traditional "eat things while running for your life" style was still there, but it had been severely changed. Instead of eating bland yellow pellets, Pac-Man had to eat different types of food for his basic sustenance, like apples, bananas, and donuts. Power pellets still turned the tables on his attacking ghosts, but there was an additional power-up as well. The "super" pellets made Pac-Man triple his size and gain a tremendous boost of speed. While gigantic, Pac-Man could run right through the ghosts in the maze, but neither

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he nor the ghosts would take damage. The second major change was the inclusion of doors that had to be unlocked by eating certain keys. When a key was consumed, more parts of the maze could be traveled through, though it was easy to forget to eat a key and be trapped against a door with a ghost blocking the only way out. When Pac-Man ingested a super pellet, he could eat the doors themselves, forever opening them and no longer having any need for the keys. It could be argued that the super pellets made Pac-Man too powerful, because he could race around the maze wherever he wanted, impervious to any and all damage. But the game was still fun to play, much more so than Pac-Man Plus.