129 · PAC-MAN

• Gobble the energizers or get gobbled by ghosts
• Introductions
  • Pac-Man
• Overview
  • The objective of the glame is to traverse an enclosed maze to eat all of the dots placed in the maze while avoiding four colored ghosts — Blinky (red), Pinky (pink), Inky (cyan), and Clyde (orange) — that pursue him.
• Gameplay
  • Do you enjoy Pac-Man? Does it satisfy?
  • Ghost Strategies?
  • Why are there no other games like Pac-Man?
• Where does Pac-Man go from here
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • Ms. Pac-Man
  • Many bad Pac-Man games
  • Pac-World games
    • The 3D attempt
  • Pac-Man Championship Edition DX
• EGL
  • Essential Arcade Game. One of the few video games everyone should play.
• Next week - Racket Attack

Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.

00:00 Pac-Man, Gobble the Energizers or get gobbled by ghosts.

00:20 And welcome to NEStalgia, chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. And right off the bat, we've got to discuss this chronologicalness because this is a weird time for chronological orders in NES games specifically released in North America because I'm not sure exactly where to put Pac-Man. It had an unlicensed version. It had a licensed version. Namco put out an official version in 1993.

00:52 So, you know, I'm placing it here. But for all we know, we should have played Pac-Man months ago or we're playing it too early. Yeah. A few months ago, I played Pac-Man in preparation of one of these episodes. And I had learned that I had played the wrong game. So I went off after the unlicensed version, which I believe should be wrong regardless.

01:18 Yeah. Unlicensed games are illegal for what it's worth. They are illegal. Well, you know, that brings up a good discussion. Are they illegal? Because Nintendo did fight this and pretty much won. Because Tenjin is the company that made this Pac-Man game really is just a subsidiary of Atari who wanted to make this spinoff label because they were they saw a loophole in one of Nintendo's rules that basically a developer could only release a certain amount of games for the NES in a particular year.

01:50 And Atari didn't like that. So they created Tenjin. It's this way they could release more. And Tenjin also saw an opportunity to just reverse engineer the lockout chip on the NES. And so this way they could make chips without going through Nintendo's official seal and releasing them into the market. Nintendo didn't like that one bit. And they told Toys R Us and other game stores, like, if you sell Tenjin games, you won't be selling any official Nintendo games. So take your pick. That's pretty rough.

02:23 Very the man of them. Right. We can talk about, like, whether that was cool, you know, or legal. But we're not going to do that because we're just going to focus on Pac-Man the game here. And before we even talk about the NES version, I just want to hear your guys, like, familiarity with Pac-Man. Like, when do you first remember playing Pac-Man? What does Pac-Man mean to you? He is kind of a video game icon. So, Joe, let's start with you.

02:50 I mean, it's hard to really remember, like, my first... Obviously, there's so many versions of Pac-Man. You can play Pac-Man on so many different, like, platforms. The one that I remember the most is not by any means the classic Pac-Man, but there was... It was on, like, my Windows computer and it was just some random program that was, like, an endless Pac-Man. It was, like, each level was, like, five or six of these one Pac-Man screen screens.

03:22 So, when you go off to the little thing to the left or the right that usually loops you around, it would take you to another screen. And it had, like, a jazzy music to it. I don't think it was a very popular thing. I just remember, like, playing that on, like, on our old, like, Windows 98 computer for a while. But then, obviously, I've played a lot of other things. Like, a couple years ago, somebody had, like, this... I think it's, like, a moderately popular, like, Pac-Man game, but he had it on his Roku TV.

03:51 And I don't remember what it's called, but it was just, like, another, like, endless Pac-Man thing. Yeah, but, you know... Pac-Man 256, I think it was. Yes, that's the one. Yeah, that's it. I knew that that one was kind of recognizable, so I was hoping one of you guys would remember what it was.

04:07 Yeah, so... I remember the first time I played Super Mario. And I remember the first time I played a lot of games from this era. But, like, because nobody in our age bracket can seem to remember the first time they played Pac-Man, I can only imagine that it's just you're born with the knowledge. Because, yeah, I have no idea the first time I played this was probably when I was three or four years old.

04:34 But, no, I mean, I enjoy it. I can't get past, like, the third level, but it's got a very satisfying quality to it. You know, I actually can remember... I wouldn't say, like, remember the date, but I can remember playing this on my grandmother's NES one day when we went over there. They had Super Mario Bros., Pac-Man, and I want to say Paperboy. And I remember playing Pac-Man, and I think what's cool about Pac-Man is that from the time I first played it until now, I haven't gotten any better.

05:10 I just... I play Pac-Man. To Sean's point, I enjoy Pac-Man. Pac-Man, it satisfies, and I think that that's, like, that's the universal appeal of a game like Pac-Man, is that there are certain people who know, like, well, if you go in this exact order, if you go in this route for this map, the ghost will never touch you, and you'll be able to eat all four of them all the time. And it's like, that's one way to play a game. But then there's also just, like, a satisfactory way of playing something that's just for fun, that, like, people who never play video games will still play something like Pac-Man, Pong.

05:45 I don't know what else really fits into that category of, like, so simple that anyone can enjoy them. But Pac-Man definitely... Yeah, Centipede. There you go. Again, Space Invader's probably more likely than Centipede. Yeah, I think Pac-Man just had something about him, you know, so early on.

06:05 You know, there aren't other games like that. Like, why have we not seen other games that just take place in, like, an enclosed maze, and you just have to, like, traverse through it, you know? Like, we don't... that doesn't exist as a genre. I feel like because it's so simple that any way that you do it, if you're going to be close enough to Pac-Man, will just look like a ripoff of Pac-Man. You know, it's, like, such a simple gameplay style. So you go through a maze and you collect the dots.

06:32 Then there's just something very satisfying about just systematically cleaning up this board. Like, I think that's really what it is. Just seeing your progress, like, very visibly on the screen is, like, what, to me, is, like, that's so satisfying. You're just kind of, like, vacuuming up all these... I'm making it sound really boring, but you're just, like, cleaning up this whole board, and by the end... No, you're right. I did that. I undid everything that was on this board.

06:57 Yeah, that... When you have that feeling of... Yeah, I guess I can't really describe it in any other words, but if you are... If you have a bunch of stuff on the board and your goal is to get rid of it, that is, in itself, a satisfying... I don't know if it's, like, something deep in our psyche, but...

07:19 Yeah, dude, I mean, I get satisfied when I mow the lawn and I look back and I'm like, wow, it's like I'm a short of the grasses. I did all that. Like, that's what this is, like, scratching that same itch.

07:29 For sure. And sure, Pac-Man could get a game where he mows the lawn and that happens, you know, but it is interesting that nobody decided to also make a game like that. And to be clear, there are plenty of Pac-Man clones on all sorts of early consoles. I think, like, the Atari 2600, the ColecoVision, the Intellivision, they all had Pac-Man clones, but nothing was able to take over what made Pac-Man such a strong game and stop its domination, and people were really just waiting for Pac-Man to come to those consoles appropriately. So if you had beaten Pac-Man to the Atari 2600 and created basically the same game, it still didn't win because it wasn't Pac-Man. I think that says something about a game like this, right? I think so.

08:16 So, you know, we talked about that Pac-Man's enjoyable and that it satisfies, but other than just clearing the stage, what makes the game fun to you guys? You know, the ghosts that are chasing you, Blinky, the red one, Pinky, the pink one, Inky, who I believe is referred to as Cyan, and Clyde, who's orange. You know, these four ghosts that just traverse the screen, they don't really have any rhyme or reason either. I wouldn't say they're, like, well-programmed AI, right? I think it's somewhere built into the code that one of them follows you, another one roams, another one purposefully, like, dodges corners that you don't dodge. I know there is some design logic there, but for the most part, you're just kind of like, it's this game of tag, right?

09:01 Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't dismiss the creative AI that they put into the game outright, because I think it is very creative the way that they made it, so that it's not just, like, you get a conga line behind you, because this game very easily could have fallen into that. So that it's always just a matter of time until you're cornered.

09:26 But, yeah, I think that without that, this game would have been way too easy, and it would not have the same legacy that it does now. Yeah, I was going to mention, too, I actually had forgotten until a little bit into playing this game that I had heard, you know, in my adult life of some time that the ghost had such specific programming, and I think that's really cool, and I'm still not familiar enough with them to be able to, like, use that to my advantage or use that information,

09:54 but that makes me a little more interested in, like, playing more just to see, like, if you watch someone who's, like, good at this game play it, it looks like they do, they are aware, okay, like, Pinky's coming at me, but I know the way Pinky moves, so I know kind of how to counter that right off the bat. I think that's a cool thing, and it's also just a fun bit of knowledge where I feel like not everybody knows that when they play Pac-Man, so it's kind of a cool little Easter egg to drop on someone. Yeah, it's a great topic for parties.

10:23 Yeah. And there's not much else going on, right? Like, you have the power pellets, and you have the fruit that appear in the center of the screen, but it's not like the game gets more complicated as you go on. If I understand correctly, it's just that the ghosts get faster, and the time that you have between the power pellet and the ghosts... Yeah. Like, everything gets faster. Everything just gets faster, right.

10:47 So, what do you think about that as an approach? Like, we always complain about, you know, games that don't have enough going on after a certain amount of gameplay loop. Is this simple enough that it's just fine, and it's almost just, like, your brain... You know, it's using, like, a separate part of your brain that just enjoys doing this? Yes. I personally would have liked to see, like, vastly changed layouts of the maze,

11:12 because I think another thing that makes this game fun is that it's not just, oh my god, I gotta get all the power pellets or whatever they're called, energy pellets or whatever, and not get hit by the ghosts, but it's also, like, effectively managing your route to kind of, like, take as little time as possible, at least for me, so you're in danger. You know, like, I don't want to miss a bunch of dots in the bottom left corner and have to come back to it later. Like, I want to be able to make every, like, pass... Yeah, you want to be efficient. ...every passage, like, capitalized. Yeah, exactly. And I imagine that if you're playing this a lot and you're getting really good at it and it's always the same layout of the board,

11:52 even if it gets faster, you kind of will just have, like, go-to strategies for every level, and it'll stop challenging you on that level, and then it'll just become a test of your reflexes, and it might just lose that more cerebral aspect of it that it would have if it was, like, a new layout every time. You also have to remember that not only are you getting this moment-to-moment gameplay, and it's, you know, it's very tight in that regard, but every couple levels you do get a slice of the very involved story of Pac-Man.

12:25 Right, that's true. The cutscenes are... Some people refer to them as the first video game cutscenes. I think they're right. Yeah, I think it's kind of funny to call them cutscenes at all, but it is nice that you get anything other than just the next maze, you know? Because technically, Joe, as we talked about earlier, you know, the Pac-Man 256 thing, that's alluding to the fact that there are 256 mazes, and then you get to the kill screen, which basically is just, like, a nonsense screen that glitches out on you and forces the game to end. You know, that's pretty much all Pac-Man has to offer, is just 256 mazes as it gets faster and faster. I'm sure there is a limit so that, like, after...

13:10 Who knows? That's legible. Maybe even the first 20 stages, it's like the speed just remains constant from that point on. I am not a pro Pac-Man player and don't know. But I think it's kind of interesting that future Pac-Man games would try to, like, add on to the Pac-Man formula, and you guys have... I guarantee you've never heard of these games. Like, after Pac-... Well, Mike, Mike, Mike, before we go into, like, the...

13:39 Oh, I'm not doing sequels and spinoffs. I'm bringing up a point here about the simplicity of the game, you know, and how it works in its favor, because a lot of times we pick on simple games as, like, yeah, I mean, all you could really do in this game was just shoot, so that wasn't that fun. But meanwhile, it's like, yeah, all you can do is eat dots in this game, but we're loving it. Yeah, but that's the difference between simplicity and elegance, and I think that Pac-Man is an elegant game. I want to talk about, you know, and this is not sequels and spinoffs, but I want to talk about Pac-Man Plus,

14:12 Super Pac-Man, Baby Pac-Man, Professor Pac-Man, and Pac and Pal. These are the first arcade games in a line of, like, who knows? There's countless Pac-Man games. So these are the first in a series of Pac-Man arcade games that I guarantee you guys have no idea what any of those are and what makes them different than regular Pac-Man. Am I right? I haven't played any of those. Joe? Okay, yeah. Yeah, because it's like, it's interesting. So Pac-Man Plus is virtually the same exact game as regular Pac-Man,

14:46 except for that they tweaked the graphics a little bit so that now the maze is green instead of blue, and honestly, I think that's where most players, that's where most players probably got off. They were like, well, the screen's green. I don't know what that's about. Probably defective, you know?

14:59 I thought you meant they, like, got off on that. I was like, what? Yeah. Like, most players are like, wow, this is great. But now there's also, like, they added bonus items, like a can of Coca-Cola and stuff like that, and eating a power pellet sometimes has unpredictable results, and I think that kind of stuff in Pac-Man Plus is what made people not be like, oh, well, this is better than Pac-Man in every way. People liked playing Pac-Man. They didn't want the changes. Now, could you explain what would happen if in some instances

15:29 that you'd eat a power pellet? So if you ate, yeah, if you ate a power pellet, sometimes it would turn the maze invisible. Oh, gee. Or it would turn only three of the four ghosts blue. Oh. You know?

15:43 The ghosts were also faster and more aggressive than they were in the original Pac-Man. So I just think, like, that's an example of, like, I might have wanted, you know, like a can of Coca-Cola in the original Pac-Man. Seems harmless, right? But maybe it wouldn't have sold as well. Seems refreshing. Yeah.

16:00 Coca-Cola satisfies. And then Baby Pac-Man, a game that is basically Pac-Man, but also adds a pinball machine to the bottom of it. Oh. Wait. I don't understand that at all. Yeah. Are you controlling Pac-Man while playing pinball? There is a joystick and there's also flippers. So the mechanical pinball section operates as a traditional,

16:23 of course smaller, it's not, like, super long, pinball machine. And the player hits targets with a metal ball using the flippers. And basically, the things that you collect on there don't matter at all except for in terms of score because play always, like, is separated between the top and the bottom. So I think what happens is that Pac-Man can go down, or maybe it's Baby Pac-Man, the sprite doesn't look any different, can go down the maze instead of just the exits on the side. And if you go down the maze, that's when you enter the pinball mode.

16:58 Huh. I guess I should have known since it's called Baby Pac-Man and it's obviously what it's going to be. Right. Yeah. And then this one's a little more obvious, though. You have Professor Pac-Man, which was not released for, like, the NES or the Atari 2600. It was released... It just solved equations. ...just for the arcade, and it's just a quiz game. It's, like, it's just Pac-Man

17:20 answering, like, which pair of sunglasses are the same, and it shows you, like, a graphic image of sunglasses, and then you have to, like, look at them and be like, it's B. B is the same. So, like, Pac-Man is the character you're playing. He's, like, the star power they put into their trivia game? Right. Essentially, that's what it is.

17:37 People did not want this stuff, though, because none of these sold nearly as well. And so I think it's just funny that we have, like, Super Pac-Man, where there's a power-up where Pac-Man gets, like, to be twice as big, and it's, like, now he's just overlapping the maze. Like, there's so many things that you can think of to do with Pac-Man, but at the end of the day, you should have just stuck with regular Pac-Man. And it just makes me question

18:04 my own, like, my own complaints in earlier games where I was like, oh, well, they should have added this or they should have added that. Like, maybe they shouldn't have. Maybe these games are a little more well-laid out than I think they are. I wouldn't give any credit to the people that we have in the past criticized, Mike. I think that that shows that you are wrong on everything. So I would just say to counter that, that Pac-Man, going back to how I think that it is

18:34 not just a simple game but an elegant game, it is hard to improve upon something that is pretty, like, platonically idealistic, you know? So, whereas in another simple game, you can improve it by adding one feature or another, the essence of Pac-Man is just navigating this maze and if you add a bunch of random shit like, you know, spying the difference between pictures or adding a pinball machine to the bottom of it, it's not going to have the same effect. I think that they, they may have made more interesting versions of it in the future which I'm sure we're going to go into but their first thoughts were not the correct thoughts.

19:16 Got it, got it. Yeah, I think it's just confusing to get a game that I can't really critique, you know? And that is because it's just, it's so simple. Like, I could say, oh, maybe they should have added more maze exits, you know? Like, it's cool that you can jump screen between left and right but that's not so useful when you're trapped at the top or bottom but like, I don't know if it necessarily needed an exit at the top or bottom. That's also a pretty nitpicky thing, you know? That's true. That's true too.

19:46 It's not a core gameplay element like a lot of the things that we have problems with in like prior episodes. Right, okay, so here's another one. Should the dots have been on every single square inch of the maze or should they have just kind of been

20:01 carefully spaced out in pockets? Well, I think you lose a little bit of that satisfaction we talked about before if it's carefully spaced out. I don't know. I think carefully spaced out would make you think about how to get to those places but when it's covering the whole maze anyways, you still have to get to those places plus everywhere else. So I'm not, I don't know, I kind of like, I like the way it is. Okay, and then how about, you know, this is just me trying. These aren't valid things. These are me throwing things out into the wind to try and find a fault with Pac-Man. Should it have been that if you eat a ghost

20:39 and then he goes to the jail, right? I'm assuming that center thing is like jail. Should it have been that he's able to come right back out while you're still powerful but meanwhile he's not blue? Like, why was he afraid of you when you had the power pellet but then you eat him, he goes back to the jail and comes right out while you're still powerful and he says, this time I'm not afraid. See, I would say that, like sort of countering the entire concept of this argument, that when you eat a ghost you should be able to become a ghost and then chase another Pac-Man.

21:16 But I don't think of these as like real ghosts. Yeah, they're definitely wearing some kind of canvas. No, I think of these as real ghosts. No, because like they Like old family members? These are dead people. No, they cannot be, yeah, they can't be because I think, no, I think these ghosts have like an actual physicality to them because they touch you and you die.

21:39 You touch them when you're powerful and they go to jail at least so that means something, you know? I think that like just because like when you touch them you die it doesn't mean that they have any like matter to them. Like it's not like they're a solid object it's just that they're stealing your Pac-essence. You think they shocked him maybe? Like they scared him and that's why he like makes that shrieking sound like they're No, I think they're generally taking his life force and then he crumples up into his constituent biological parts on the floor and that's what that is.

22:13 So, I don't think that they have to be physical to turn to turn Pac-Man into a pirate style of viscera. I don't think that's the case. But now that you mention it when I was younger I actually did not it never dawned on me that they were ghosts like when I first saw this they look like I always thought they were like some little tentacly creatures like aliens or something like yeah something like that but now I've just I'm just so it's so ingrained to me that they're ghosts that I've actually forgotten that I didn't believe that they were ghosts at the beginning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've unlocked like repressed memories.

22:45 Well, you know if you watch any of the Pac-Man TV shows you know you'd probably learn a lot of the lore to each of these these ghost characters and you know maybe like who they used to be before they died and stuff. I think Pinky and Clyde were married at one point. I'm not sure. Yeah, and apparently Inky is often depicted as a goofy and slow-headed ghost.

23:08 Oh, that's just unfair. Yeah, I don't I don't like that characterization. Yeah, and I mean like I could joke with you right now and actually look up like deep lore for Pac-Man like the fact that Inky's home is Ghostland but honestly this whole thing is just like mumbo jumbo to me like it's crazy that there are games like Pac and Roll and Pac-Land that I've never heard of that like have have additional information on Pac-Man for me.

23:41 Well, Mike you were trying to find a critique on the game so can I give you a critique that I have particularly about the NES version? Oh, this would be great because you need a reason not to try it on. That's what we're talking about. Yeah, we do.

23:57 So like I said I've played this in many other versions and I'm sure everybody's played this in tons of different versions and the biggest thing I noticed in the NES version is that the turn controls are like a little unresponsive or maybe they're so precise that like I feel like I miss turns quite a bit like you can't just like press the button and hold it to turn or like even for a second you have to like do like a sharp tap at the exact moment. I don't know if you guys had that experience but I noticed I miss turns a lot where I'm like I definitely hit the button but I must have timed it like poorly like the timing must just be so precise. Did you guys notice that?

24:30 Well, here's the thing, Joe. I'm a sucker for turns in Pac-Man. Like that's my favorite thing to do in Pac-Man is to anticipate my next move. But of all the other things to do in Pac-Man? No, that's my favorite and so what's interesting is like in the arcade version it's very clear and I don't know if it's just because the screen's bigger or what have you but if you

24:51 can only turn left or right as you're like moving up the maze, right? If you hold down like left as your option it will register that and automatically move you left even if there's nowhere to move left yet. Like when you get to the point where you can move between left and right it will register that and move you left and that's what I really like about games like Pac-Man Championship Edition

25:16 and Miss Pac-Man and stuff like that. I just couldn't pull it off in this game and I wasn't sure if it was just that I didn't give it enough like if there wasn't enough room between the barriers for that to happen like that the open spaces were just always right around the corner but I couldn't pull it off in the sense that like if I tap left and then don't have it pre-registered like holding it down if it would go left or not and so I would say that like that matters like it's kind of important because being able to plot out your moves is what matters most in a game like Pac-Man right?

25:50 Yeah yeah and I feel like in most games like this this is going to sound like a weird nitpick but when you're actually playing it I feel like it's pretty noticeable but like in other games you'll kind of like hold the D-pad and like kind of roll your thumb to the next you know to the next you know to the right of the D-pad if you were on the up

26:08 now I feel like you have to just do like a quick tap at the exact moment and I feel like that was what was making me miss turns like if I were to just kind of roll my thumb to the other side of the D-pad he just wouldn't respond Yeah I don't I can't say that I had the same experience I thought that I was alright with like pre-loading my input I still miss turns but that's just I blame myself in terms of like my reaction time but I guess I don't have anything else to say on that topic Yeah it just overall like just to sum it up it felt harder to control than other versions of Pac-Man that I've played And I would argue that like for me I prefer to play Pac-Man on

26:50 you know on a D-pad as opposed to a joystick I know that sounds kind of crazy but I like it when I'm purposefully pushing if there's only four directions to go anyway I like it when I'm purposefully toggling the direction I want on something like a D-pad or a keyboard than a joystick which technically can you know rotate a full 360 degrees Yeah I think I would agree if there's only four points then might as well cut out any of the

27:17 extra distraction there Not that it would register a diagonal movement anyway it's just that I prefer to feel precise in my movements as Pac-Man And did anybody even bother to collect the fruit? Like do you guys care about stuff like that? Like for us high score doesn't matter so like when you saw the fruit in the center were you like yeah I'll just stop collecting the dots for a second and go get the fruit? I would try and loop back around and grab it if it was if an opportunity presented itself but it was never my number one concern but I still had that subconscious

27:54 want Yeah I think it's fun right? It's like there's something about the fruit that's just fun to eat it's like the whole game is about eating so it might as well Right and it's nice to see yeah it's nice to see the fruit that you've collected like on the side the whole time so you can get just like it's like your little trophies so like I actually also went for it You're on your way to a picnic Yeah exactly I think that's the end goal of this game

28:20 I also this is just like a real non sequitur but I always thought that like the dots looked like little like what are those tiny little like pasta balls and I always thought like those looked good too like oh like eating pasta no no those tiny the little like the tiny little like little spheres they're like tiny and they're little is the only way of describing it Yeah they're tiny and they're little I know exactly Also is it pretty much like Pac-Man though right they just look like Pac-Man if he just closed his mouth

28:48 True Yeah like baby Pac-Man got smaller Maybe he's like like those crabs that eat the the baby crabs you know like they just like they give birth to them and then just immediately start eating them maybe that's what Pac-Man does Yes and for the record I'm thinking of whatever the the pasta is in like Italian wedding soup those tiny little like dots Ah minestrone No

29:09 Oh I honestly don't know I thought you were talking about the little meatballs in Italian wedding soup for a second I was like that's not a pasta I'll find the name of it Anyway to get away from pasta for a second did you guys know Pac-Man was originally called Puck-Man Yes Okay and do you think that that was a good decision to change his name I guess it's corruptible I think the reason was because of graffiti Yes or vandalism Vandalism

29:38 You know I actually don't know what a Pac-Man is you know like Puck-Man does sound like the better way to describe him but you know at the point that I was alive it just felt right to call him Pac-Man it was like you know it's like yeah everybody's going along with it we'll call him Pac-Man You're born with the knowledge Right It's just something you cannot you cannot dispute Yes exactly and that's how that's my feelings towards Pac-Man is like if I see him even though at one point it might have made sense to call him Puck-Man I don't feel like that's correct It's like

30:10 I you know my mom told me that at a certain point they were thinking name me Vince but I'm not Vince I'm Sean Right so But you do look like a Vince You know and Mike you kind of look like a Pete Oh no that's no good Oh no You know we really didn't talk about our strategies for playing this game and I know that it's pretty simple and we've covered that gambit of it but I wonder about for the ghosts and stuff like that and the power pellets did you guys try to eat all four all four ghosts when you got the power pellets did you use that as an opportunity to just like

30:47 eat more pellets on the screen while they stayed away from you Joe I'm curious to hear what you did I well I used the the big power pellets as like I tried to spare them to keep them as like a defense if suddenly I felt like I was being chased I could go to the nearest power pellet and turn the put the ghosts on the defense and I would try to eat the ghosts if they were within reasonable range

31:09 but then I watched a lot of like plays on YouTube also and it looks like like the people who are really good of the game will try and eat all the ghosts because they're trying to rack up their score but for me it was more of just a way to get them off my tail for a minute so I can continue trying to clear the level yeah I would I would say that I was sort of in the middle there that I would hold off for a bit to see if I could get them close because it is a very satisfying crunch whenever you get to them and especially when they're all lined up for you but at a certain point like you're not just gonna leave the power pellet and then everything else around it empty for you to have to come back and clear so

31:46 it's just whatever situation I was in yeah I found myself actually you know if I wasn't in any immediate danger I would just lock my Pac-Man to whatever direction would keep him up against the side of the wall and wait for the ghosts to come near me so that this way I could then like as soon as they got close enough eat the power pellet and eat some of them and continue to clear the rest of the stage so this way I was making like kind of progress on both but focusing on the points so you were camping I was camping yes and I'm pretty sure that you know that's illegal in video games you can't camp yep so I don't know how to play video games correctly apparently

32:28 but I would say that that is a legitimate strategy for everyone it's the best of both worlds in my opinion because you can eat the ghosts that try to attack you when they know full well that there's a power pellet right around the corner and then at the same time you don't have to chase the other ones that didn't take the bait because they were smart enough and chances are they're also smart enough to know what to do in the situation of a power pellet the amount of anthropization that you have for these anthropomorph positions I did very fine well don't worry it's fine because we found out too that Inky is actually a chef in the second cutscene of

33:05 Pac-Man world so he's scolded by Toc-Man for not making his cake chocolate so these things all happen and there is lore and there is a universe established it's all behind the scenes right it's for the real nitty gritty stuff Pac-Man you know is a thing that has like there's a song about him there's like graffiti for Pac-Man all over the world right like that's just something it's iconic now at this point to associate Pac-Man imagery with gamers and yet there's nothing really toxic about Pac-Man right I thought that Pac-Man was a little racist at some point but I do agree that now he's cleaned up his act okay that's good that's good and so you know I would like to

33:53 just walk through some of the sequels and spinoffs because there's a few that we have to talk about and the most important one I think is Miss Pac-Man which is the direct follow-up to Pac-Man and was the most successful Pac-Man game in North America in the arcades for some reason it sold more units than regular Pac-Man I'm not sure if that's because they made Miss Pac-Man sexy or you know because they made her like a Marilyn Monroe character I'd say that in addition to that it was also because the cut scenes were much more high quality like you get to watch a love story unfold yeah they were like titled right yeah yeah they were titled it was like they meet

34:36 they kiss like I remember that yeah so that happens and that's probably the first narrative in video games yeah it was really really like you're playing that little story narrative by every level you defeat it's like it's a Quantic Dream I think developed I think it's just important to like for Miss Pac-Man you know for Pac-Man they do you know make him into into a character with legs and arms and stuff like that and then they go as far as to explain that like Pac-Man had legs even in the original Pac-Man game he was just wearing rollerblades so that's how he grew so fast wait so are we looking at him top down so his mouth opens like sideways

35:20 no that's impossible I think they just didn't have the memory you know you have to use your imagination right okay but yeah for certain things you don't have to imagine how he walked they'll explain that it was rollerblades but you should know that that his mouth doesn't open sideways but yeah Miss Pac-Man it's weird because then they show her legs but they make them like they make them like photorealistic

35:46 women's legs and stuff like very curvy and things and I'm like why like that that just seems so unnecessary but were they photorealistic was it like a real like image of legs no that's terrifying he's just saying that they're drawn a little bit more realistic yeah they're drawn more realist than say yeah exactly yeah I don't know it's like Betty Boop's legs but with Miss Pac-Man's body it's very strange anyway and then there

36:13 are many bad Pac-Man games that we just can't cover here there's too many of them but then there's the Pac-World games are you guys familiar with the Pac-Man world games no are these the like the the modern arcade titles they're the 3D platformers on the PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 and and I think they might have gotten their way to the GameCube as well and stuff like that I think it was I think they were called Pac-World but I played this Pac-World 1 at least growing up on PlayStation 1 I played that game and I remember because I had already played Super Mario 64 and

36:52 Sonic Adventure that my understanding as a kid was just like well of course this is where Pac-Man needs to go you know like he needs to go to 3D and become a platformer just like Sonic did and just like Mario showed off how you can make the jump from 2D to 3D but now of course I look at these games and they're garbage so I kind of wonder like did Pac- was Pac-Man just best left at like this very first game that just happens to be pretty close to perfection

37:20 I think so I think that the only thing that personally that I think you could improve upon is by taking this formula and changing things like keeping it within the formula changing the layout of the maze maybe playing around with like having dots placed not everywhere or different ways you have to get there but like nothing I don't think it needs fancy power ups or weird things that the that the power pellets do when you eat them I think just

37:47 having new challenges in the layout and keeping the sentiment the same I think that's I mean this game is just so simple I think that's all it needs you know Joe I got great news for you it's a game called Pac-Man Championship Edition! DX it was on my top five games of the decade for the 2010s if you remember that episode where we recorded that and that's exactly what they did to finally set Pac-Man it's very enjoyable in a multiplayer setting in the arcades and I think there's just something about how it took them 30 plus years to get to the point where they just say oh well what if we just took the original formula

38:29 and you know I don't want to say it's like a rhythm game or something like that but there is like a flow state to the game where the dots are placed you know they're placed purposefully so that you can perfectly capture ghosts along your route and then as soon as you finish that route of doing it correctly a new route is placed where you catch even more ghosts and then eventually it leads to a power pellet where you can eat like 60 ghosts at a time all set to music it's super satisfying it's an amazing game and I think

39:01 that's what's crazy is like they tried to add things to the original Pac-Man they tried to go away from that and turn Pac-Man into you know everything from a quiz show to a 3D platformer to Tetris games they made Pac-Attack which was a Tetris game you know they tried all those different things and it's amazing because the brand was still just fine because people still enjoy that regular Pac-Man just a-okay that when Pac-Man Championship Edition came out people were like whoa what's this finally like a creative new spin on the formula that worked way back in 1980

39:43 but where do Pac-Man games go from here VR but you know you joke Sean but I was thinking and this is this is serious so even though it sounds crazy remember the Budweiser commercial where they like turned Pac-Man into like real life and they had a guy like run through a real life maze of Pac-Man I know but I I'm interested yeah it definitely it was like a Super Bowl commercial and they used it for like two years straight not at the Super Bowl

40:12 but like afterwards it was just all over the place in terms of commercials and I do wonder if like Pac-Man in VR where you are like you know first person running through these mazes collecting the dots and you can't see the ghosts on the screen you just kind of like as you turn the corners you see them I could imagine that turning into a little bit of like a survival horror style thing it could it may well exist already in Alien Isolation but like

40:40 if you take it as a Pac-Man game I think Pac-Man could do well in VR in that regard of like a new element of surprise for Pac-Man players I could do it yeah you would just have to do something to make it not impossible like you'd have to slow the ghosts down or make it so you could see them coming a little further ahead otherwise you would just turn corners into ghosts all the time I think it would be great and it would look great on like the PS5 when it comes out if it was just people with

41:11 sheets over their head right that's true too I mean you know if we want to just rip off directly from Pac-Man Verse which was a crazy complicated to play GameCube game that required three Game Boy Advances as well if you want

41:27 to use that as an idea the way that worked is Pac-Man could be controlled by a GameCube controller and then if three Game Boy Advances using the Game Boy Advance to GameCube connector were plugged into the GameCube as well they could control the ghosts on their Game Boy Advances so this way it was three people as the ghosts and one person as Pac-Man and that made it for like a fun thing where like no longer

41:53 do you have to rely on the AI it's people chasing it's your friends chasing you down I think that could work well in VR too where like the ghosts are other VR players so it's like nobody has any idea where they're going the real monsters are other people right and that's why they wear sheets to reveal themselves at the end it's like you pull off the sheet and you see your friends and you're like oh you

42:19 but I yeah I think that's where Pac-Man goes from here if we're being honest I'm glad we kind of came to that conclusion Sean together but I can't really see you know because they did do Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 and it just didn't have the same type of magic because again they tried to add more things rather than just create new layouts of interesting solves yeah I'm watching it now and it's just a little it's a little chaotic so I'm not really sure exactly it has that Pac-Man plus problem yeah yeah so I think I think if you want to do it you got to look at the 1980 game and use new technology to make it fun again

42:56 but that's it for Pac-Man talk you know we could have done a whole lot of things on development but I don't think it's worth it because Pac-Man on the NES was developed by a bunch of people who were hell-bent on selling unlicensed video games yeah they do not deserve to be talked about right it is worth noting in terms of like why does the game play pretty well if it's unlicensed or if it is licensed it doesn't matter which version you have it's because it's actually all based off of Namco's official Famicom version of Pac-Man which came out in 1984

43:29 so it took four years to get here Namco's already made it but they're not releasing it in North America so instead Tenjin decides like we'll just take this and release it under some like shady deals and stuff like that which is only going to get stranger because Namco is then in 1993 going to decide like well nobody can buy Pac-Man because Tenjin's not allowed to sell it so we might as well release it again so we're going to do all this Pac-Man talk again in like 2028 okay I mean that's enough time I think yep uh okay so let's do the essential games list

44:10 Joe well I'm gonna almost repeat myself from last week although this game I enjoyed quite a bit and I think it's it's got a level of simplicity and uh simplicity and and just straightforward fun where you're just it's it's satisfying in a way where I think it's a play it um but it's also gonna repeat Sean from last week you've all played this you all know what it is um it's a

44:36 fun little look into like old like an old game and like into history uh it's not gonna blow your socks off or anything you know it's exactly what Pac-Man always has been so I'm gonna say it's a play it because I think for an arcade game to keep my attention this way is nothing to uh is nothing to uh sneeze at but uh but you know it still doesn't do anything with where I'm itching to go back to it

45:06 yeah okay no Sean's gonna go okay okay no no it's all right Michael go no yeah Joe would you mind voting for me yeah I'm gonna repeat myself from a minute ago yeah I would say that Pac-Man is as we've only referred to so far for I believe Donkey Kong Pac-Man is an essential arcade game it's one of the few video games everyone in the world should play like it's so accessible that I can't imagine like a language barrier being a

45:37 problem like everyone should play Pac-Man and the fact of the matter is is that you can play Pac-Man in an arcade still today like it's one of the few arcade machines that you can find almost anywhere you can play Pac-Man on the computer you can probably play it if you type in Pac-Man on Google I'm sure you can play that Google version of Pac-Man you can play Pac-Man anywhere so I don't think this NES version is

45:59 anything to rave about and so it'd be really weird to have it on games you must play on the NES because you can play this game anywhere so even though I would have considered it as an essential game just because of the legacy status of it and how good it actually still is today it's not going to be on our NES essential games list because there's nothing that makes the NES version special I say whenever you can play Pac-Man even if it's just for a minute or two you should be playing it so go for it Sean yeah you've pretty much covered everything so I'm just going to echo that pretend I said everything Mike said

46:36 that's why I ran in Sean that's why I made sure that I could vote second for sure you just steal thunder don't worry Sean you'll have plenty to say in your essential games vote next week when we cover racket attack I know that you have been looking forward to that one so we're going to let you kick off the essential games list vote for racket attack next week okay

46:59 yeah I think it's a tennis game just if I had to take a guess I'm not it could be a fly swatting game I have I have had many thoughts about fly swatting in the past so yeah I mean there's a great fly swatting game in Mario Paint on the Super Nintendo so it can happen

47:19 right here in your backyard I think you know everybody should play Pac-Man today if you listen to this episode and you didn't even get an itch to just like try the free version of Pac-Man that you can clearly find by googling it like I feel like any version of Java had this you know it's so accessible of a game that it makes me think like what else is like that like Mario is locked behind Nintendo so you can't just type in Super Mario Brothers and play it right in your browser without doing like some shady sites or you know consciously doing something wrong but Pac-Man Emulation is illegal yeah Pac-Man you can play

48:02 emulation is only illegal if you don't own the game you're emulating yeah but you know Pac-Man is something that you do have access to it's almost like a good that's available to everybody

48:15 it's like air yeah it's like the library yeah Pac-Man Pac-Man Pac-Man and Tetris are like the library right you can play it on anywhere to play some Pac-Man right now or just mow the lawn yep or mow the lawn yeah mowing the lawn is like playing Pac-Man you heard it here first Joe any other words of encouragement

48:36 I think I don't want to dole them all out too quickly so maybe next week okay that sounds good Sean anything else you want to say to the listeners I actually don't have any more words in my vocabulary I thought you were just gonna not say anything to that question yeah that would be fun I will say that if you enjoyed this week's episode or any of the episodes that we've ever done we'd love to hear about it you can tweet us at NostalgiaCast on Twitter we're very active

49:02 there I think I posted a lot of weird Pac-Man stuff and some vintage Puckman stuff I think Pac-Man went through a lot of different design phases but it's important to know that he does wear a hat oh I wasn't aware of that Pac-Man wears a hat through most of the 80s and the early 90s and if you didn't know that you're just not a Pac-Man fan because it's the same hat every time too so I think it's a red trilby is what I want to call it wow I didn't know that Pac-Man was

49:39 like a neck beard yes in a way in a way I'm Mike Esposito you can find me at Esposito Film on Twitter and I'll talk to you soon I'll talk toκεκε I'll talk toκε I'll toκεκεκεκεκε!!!!!κεκε!!

50:08 !κεκεκεκε!!! Thank you.