Pac-Man
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Pac-Man and Galaga 3DS save data can be erased after all
It turns out there is a (previously undocumented) way to erase save data in Pac-Man and Galaga Dimensions on the 3DS, despite reports to the contrary last week. It's a bit more complicated than simply diving into the options menu. Upon start-up, players can input the command "ABXYLR," which will wipe the save data from the cartridge. "There has been a miscommunication at our level," a Namco Bandai representative told Eurogamer today. "Thanks for your understanding." The rep then shouted "Aye bee ex why el arrr" and vanished in a cloud of smoke.
AI competition pits Ms. Pac-Man against ghosts in the Manichean struggle of our time (video)
While the world breathlessly awaits the Pac-Man reality TV show, the University of Essex held a programming competition starring that other yellow chomper. The Ms. Pac-Man vs. Ghost Team contest pitted 13 competitors from nine different countries against one another, to see who could create the most elusive Ms. Pac-Man or the wiliest ghost gang. The participants coded routines for the titular hero or Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Sue, with organizers then running the programs against one another on the Java-based playing field. The highest single-game score went to Atif, who racked up 69240 points versus DarkRodry's ghosts, while ghost team Legacy2TheReckoning held RandomMsPacMan to a mere 410 points. Another competition will take place in August, so limber up your coding fingers, Pac-Maniacs. In the meantime, strap on your headgear and cheer on your round yellow hero in the video below.
Pac-Man reimagined with Kinect and Unity3D
YouTube user buptkangbo used the Unity3D game engine to develop a sort of 3D version of Pac-Man -- or, at least, a game roughly equivalent to what someone who has never seen Pac-Man would imagine if you had just described it to them. A yellow sphere walks around through a grassy field, collecting mushrooms and throwing them at ghost monsters. That's cool; the "official" Pac-Man platformers took lots of liberties, too. What makes this particular version unique is that it's controlled with Kinect, played dolphin-style -- by which we mean the player leans into the camera as if swimming underwater. See for yourself after the break. If the demo actually becomes available for download and you then decide to try it, we suggest having plenty of snack foods handy for the full Pac-Man experience.
The World's Biggest Pac-Man game takes over the internet, your life
It's officially the weekend, which means you've got two choices: one, mimic iTr3vor and toss up a YouTube video of yourself dancing in an Apple Store, or two, blow your own mind with the magic of HTML5. In between hour-long Pica-Pic sessions, we'd recommend killing time in The World's Biggest Pac-Man game, which can be "played for fun" or linked to your Facebook account for those who savvy statistics. We'd bother telling you more, but we're fairly sure you're already firmly occupied with the source link. You're welcome. Or, we're sorry.
'World's Biggest Pac-Man' connects user-created mazes in your browser
Yesterday at the MIX11 conference, Microsoft revealed a project undertaken with Soap Creative and Namco Bandai: The World's Biggest Pac-Man, an HTML 5 version of the iconic arcade game with user-created levels. Every maze is connected, allowing players to use the "exits" on the side of a maze to enter another one -- even if it feels really wrong to leave a maze partially completed (so wrong). The rapidly expanding continent of Pac-Man mazes currently includes 1420 separate screens. The app requires users to sign into Facebook before creating new mazes, but no login is required to explore the growing selection of levels. It should run on any browser (despite being released as promotion for Internet Explorer 9), but based on our experience iOS devices aren't compatible.
Pac-Man & Galaga Dimensions packs in Championship Edition, Legions
Though still not announced for release in North America, Namco Bandai's first (of what will likely be many) iterations of Pac-Man and Galaga on 3DS has already gotten more attractive. The latest issue of Famitsu reports that, in addition to newfangled gyroscope-controlled versions of the two classics, Pac-Man & Galaga Dimensions will include Pac-Man Championship Edition and Galaga Legions, plus the original arcade versions of Pac-Man and Galaga. The arcade ports will make use of the 3DS's autostereoscopic effect to create the illusion of looking down on the original coin-op machines -- though purists can always turn down the 3D slider, we assume. Players will also be able to choose between multiple cabinet variants. Of course, this will all seem quaint when we're writing about the seventh repackaging of Pac-Man and Galaga for 3DS four years from now.
We're gonna need a video game death montage
Even Rocky had a montage -- and now it's video games' turn! Here's a test: see if you can guess every single game featured in this montage of video game deaths from Boing Boing, posted just past the break. If you get 'em all right, we promise to love you forever. That's a good enough prize, right? More like the best prize ever.
Pac-Man creator reminisces about classic game design, calls for creativity
Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani wants the next Pac-Man game to be about "a singing Pac-Man." Not a musical, "not Chicago," but more of a Blues Brothers type thing, he told a packed house at his GDC postmortem. Nobody there knew what that meant either. In the hourlong presentation, Iwatani shared concept art from the thirty-year-old arcade classic, including the hand-drawn concept for the famous Pac-Man death animation, and even a chart of ghost speeds. He identified the design of Pac-Man as female-focused, with an emphasis on "eating" as a verb ("Girls love to eat desserts," Iwatani explained. "My wife often eats desserts.") and cute characters, including cute enemies.
Pac Machina displays a trivial love of the needlessly complex
Now, you may look at this little project and ask yourself, "what is the point of this thing?" but that would, in fact, be the wrong question. The Pac Man-loving creator of Pac Machina needs no reasons, and honestly, neither do we. While we wouldn't necessarily want one of these clock-like Pac Men in our drawing room, we admire the creativity and time put into what was surely a somewhat tedious project. We are huge fans of tedium, after all. Video is after the break.
Hand-cranked mechanical Pac-Man gobbles up our heart
Here's a thing we didn't know we wanted until the internet showed it to us: a hand-cranked, clockwork Pac-Man sculpture. Its creator, Jonathan Guberman, hopes to create a fully playable mechanical Pac-Man machine called "Pac Machina" -- but this proof of concept is cool enough for the time being.
Ms. Pac-Man coming soon to iPad, followed by free Valentine's update for iPhone Pac-Man
Prior to the Hallmark holiday, Valentine's Day, Namco-Bandai Games will unload an iPad version of its iOS game, Ms. Pac-Man. Sadly, we don't have any idea how much it'll cost, but the $4.99 iPhone version that's currently available on the App Store seems like a good starting point for speculation. If you like your pellet-chomping and ghost-accosting a bit more on the masculine side, Namco Bandai Games promises a free update to the iOS version of Pac-Man, which gives the game a special holiday-themed makeover. The re-skinned game is visible in our gallery below. Wakka wakka! %Gallery-115725%
Researchers pit microorganisms in deadly game of 'PAC-mecium'
At first glance, the so-called "biotic games" research conducted by a Stanford University team that's installed microorganisms into crude, real-life video games merely raises the question: Wow -- that's a job? A summary of the team's experimentation on living organisms (red flag!) in this month's Lab on a Chip journal suggests that biotic games could "have significant conceptual and cost-reducing effects on biotechnology and eventually health care," not to mention that they could also "educate society at large to support personal medical decisions and the public discourse on bio-related issues." Those sure sound like complicatedly-worded, yet noble goals -- or at least good cover for playing video games all day -- but we sense a distressing undertone in the work here. Just watch the clip (after the break) of the researchers' Pac-Man prototype clone, "PAC-mecium," wherein, ostensibly, a player would "guide" unwitting paramecia to happy-face yeast pellets and attempt to keep the poor protozoa from being devoured by a giant zebrafish larvae, or not. It's pretty clear to us that the next "guinea pigs" in this diabolical plan will be mice, and then probably monkeys. The final stage? Gerard Butler.
Pac-Man reality TV show coming, and not a moment too soon
Not since Hollywood Reporter told us about a possible Asteroids bio-pic have we been excited about a film or TV show: Deadline Hollywood is reporting that Merv Griffin Entertainment has hammered out a deal with Namco Bandai to develop a reality TV show based on Pac-Man. Envisioned by Merv Griffin Entertainment's president of TV Roy Bank as something "big" and "crazy" like Wipeout or Fear Factor, the company wants "to take what Pac-Man is and bring it to life, to bring what is essentially the world's biggest game of tag to television." If this doesn't sound like the definition of a mid-season replacement, we don't know what is.
Report: Pac-Man reality series in development
Certainly, this must be one of the signs of our inevitable doom. According to Deadline Hollywood, Merv Griffin Entertainment is planning video game-themed reality series where contestants compete in a series of loosely game-related challenges for a chance to win a job as a video game tester. Just kidding! Unfortunately, that just makes too much sense. No, the company supposedly plans on adapting Pac-Man as a reality series. Wait, what? "The idea we have is to take what Pac-Man is and bring it to life, to bring what is essentially the world's biggest game of tag to television," Merv Griffin's Roy Bank told Deadline, presumably while wiping some brownie crumbs off his face. The pitch, inspired by ABC's Wipeout, comes in time for the mascot's 30th anniversary. At least there's some reason behind this madness. We can only assume that the end result will look exactly like this fan-made movie adaptation. And if Pac-Man: The Reality Series manages to find an audience, who knows what other game franchises we'll see adapted for the TV screen? Cho Aniki, perhaps?
Pac-Man Battle Royale now shipping to US arcades
Great news for people who live anywhere near an arcade in the US: Distributor BMI Gaming is now shipping the wonderful Pac-Man Battle Royale to American arcade operators. When we played Battle Royale at E3, our sheer delight was tainted by sadness, as we figured that many of you would never get to experience this game if it only saw a limited Japanese release. While this isn't the home version we so dearly want, even the slightest possibility of being able to play this four-player Pac-vs.-Pac game is enough to put a smile on our faces. Arcade Heroes reports that the $4275 price tag for the cocktail-style cabinet is low relative to other new-release arcade games, meaning that arcade operators will have an incentive to choose Battle Royale over other games. And that's good for everyone except the first three Pac-Men we meet in our local arcade.
Pac-Man glows 'green' in Switzerland's Festival of Trees and Lights
With a few simple additions, artists Benedetto Bufalino and Benedict Deseille turned Geneva, Switzerland's Festival Arbres et Lumières ("Festival of Trees and Lights") into a festival of trees, lights and ... ghosts. The artists added giant Pac-Man characters to an existing string of public pellets lights, creating an installation that requires no extra energy consumption. Pac-Man, of course, looks to be in dire need of some power -- in power pellet form -- in this chase scene, also from the festival, photographed by DeviantArtist Attila-le-Ain.
Body and Brain Connection's Pac-Man minigame on video
During a demonstration of Dr. Kawashima's Body and Brain Connection, we experienced an odd Kinect Pac-Man minigame. Now, you can see the oddness for yourself. It's not Pac-Man CE by any means, but it is another weird variant of the 30-year-old game.
Gorge yourself on new Pac-Man CE DX media
We can identify with Pac-Man. No matter how much he consumes, it will never fill the hole in his heart. It's kinda how we feel waiting for Pac-Man Championship Edition DX: empty inside. At least these new screens and trailer make the wait a bit less agonizing.
Pac-Man CE DX trailer is madness
Imagine an '80s gamer hurled into 2010. He rushes to Joystiq, freaks (because the internet) and finds the future of gaming is ... a Pac-Man: Championship Edition DX trailer. It's gotta be a little disconcerting, if only because the people of today have turned Pac-Man into an LSD-fueled nightmare.
Treat yourself to this Pac-Pumpkin Halloween lawn decoration
There's really ever only one excuse to drop $100 on an 8-foot Pac-Man lawn decoration. Thank you, Halloween.
