Pac-Man

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Pac-Man
PacMan.png
Developer Namco
Publisher Namco
Majesco (re-release)
Platform(s) Sega Game Gear
Release date Japan January 29, 1991
USA October 1991
USA 2000
Genre Action
Rating(s)
ESRB:ESRB E.svg - Everyone
Mode(s) 1 player
2 players (alternating, versus)
Media
Sega Game Gear:
ROM Cartridge
Input
Sega Game Gear:
D button
Next title Ms. Pac-Man (Sega Genesis, 1991)

Pac-Man (often known as PAC-MAN, also previously named as Puck Man) is an action game, originally developed and published by Namco (currently trading as Bandai Namco Entertainment) for Arcade machines in 1980. In this game, players control a yellow ball named Pac-Man and eat all the pellets (and other objects, such as fruits) in a maze while avoiding ghosts. By eating Power Pellets (the blinking ones), players can slow the ghosts and hurt by eating them in order to increase their score. As the game progresses, ghosts become faster and even immune to the Power Pellets' effects.

Namco brought Pac-Man to Sega Game Gear in 1991, only in Japan and the United States. This version is, essentially, a colorization of the Game Boy version, released a year earlier. The Game Gear version was been used as the basis for SNK doing their Neo Geo Pocket Color version as well. Both Game Boy and Game Gear ports feature a competition mode by linking two of the same systems together, as well as the ability to play with a pixel-perfect screen with zoom or an optimized full-screen mode. In the Game Gear version, this is done by pressing the D button to the Left or Right.

Official Pac-Man ports would be brought to other Sega systems: The first is available in Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures for Sega Genesis (originally released for Super Nintendo), which can be played by going into the city's Arcade. Another port of Pac-Man is available in Namco Museum for Sega Dreamcast, which was a port from the Nintendo 64 version of the compilation. A minimalist version of the game, Pac-It, was made for Visual Memory Unit devices, by using Namco Museum to download it directly to VMU. Another Genesis port, made by the Russian programmer Shiru, was been released in 2018 for the My Arcade Pac-Man Pocket Player handheld, which is a Genesis clone. This version is licensed by Bandai Namco but not by Sega, however.

The MSX version of Pac-Man was ported to both SG-1000 and Sega Master System by fans.

All characters from this game appear in 404 Game Re:set. Two different characters (in their Anode and Cathode forms, respectively) based around the original game were added in an after-launch update, including a trophy of Pac-Man itself.

Names in other languages[edit]

Language Name Meaning
Japanese パックマン
Pakkuman
Pac-Man
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