PACMAN!


Moderator John here. I'm a sucker for Pac-Man. Always have been, always will be. The game caught my attention as a child when we went to the local Pizza Hut on special occasions. Sometimes for a birthday and sometimes when we got good grades in school. And sometimes on Sunday evenings when my brothers and I had behaved well that week / mom didn't feel like cooking. We could enjoy the pizza, coca-cola, and enjoy the small arcade area in the restaurant. Because back then, Pizza Hut was a restaurant, not a pizza chain.

Of course, the one that grabbed my attention, and would be the bane of quarters for years to come, was Pac-Man. But this arcade unit was a cocktail version of Pac-Man, and was a style of arcade cabinet I had never seen before.


The fact that you could eat pizza, drink soda, and play Pac-Man blew my tiny little 8 year old brain into pac-pellet sized pieces. It started a life-long love of Pac-Man and the series as a whole. While these days I prefer the more fast paced Mrs. Pac-Man, I still won't turn down a game and still enjoy checking out the new iterations in the series. The anniversary edition has been out for quite a few years now and is a great game to check out on modern systems. But I was making a quick post to share a couple new games in the Pac-Man series.


Released in August of 2016, Pac-Man pop is, well, another version of the pop-style game that has been around for a looooong time, Puyopop being one of the more popular series on earlier gen consoles. While I still need to check to see if I can get this on my Kindle, I generally enjoy pop-style games and it looks fun. Plus, Pac-Man looks adorable.


The other game that I wanted to share real quick is Pac-Man 256. This takes the kill screen on level 256 and turns it into its own survival-style game, with the players continually running away from the ever degrading game code. The kill screen came about because the original hardware could only hold so much memory and, at the time, developers didn't think anyone could get that far so it wasn't seen as a problem. A lot of earlier arcade games were like that, but Pac-Man's became famous and a rite of passage for true Pac-Man aficionados.

While the game has been out for awhile on PC, it recently got ported to the consoles and is notable as it has single player and multi-player. Again, on the 'to buy' list, and looks cool to play. 

Have a good week everyone!

-ArcadeCastle




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