#pac-land

The Man of Pac

I'd sooner set fire to my hair than watch Christmas Comes to Pac-Land.

Ms. Pac-Man / Pepper Pac-Man / Pac-Mom

Here’s some Pac-drawings to fill your hunger! I wanted to give the pieces a nostalgic vibe that’s reminiscent of the 80s & 90s era Japanese Pac-man art, so I hope you like the effort~!

Pac-Land (Famicom)

Developed/Published by: Namco Released: 21/09/1985 Completed: 17/11/2023 Completion: Beat all five levels before it looped. Version Played: Namco Museum Archives Vol. 2 Trophies / Achievements: n/a 

Whelp, I accidentally put this in my spreadsheet as being released in November 198*6* instead of 1985, where it makes a lot more sense. But here’s what I’ll say, immediately: I wish it hadn’t been released until 1986!

Pac-Land is one of the earliest games I remember playing in the arcades, indeed I have memories of playing it in an arcade in Candleriggs Market which hasn’t existed since… the mid-90s? and I remember it being one of my absolute favourites before I graduated to things like Contra. It’s not really hard to see why. It’s colourful, full of character, and easily understandable by a bairn as probably [“probably? Great research”--Ed.] the earliest side-scrolling character action game, coming out a hair ahead of the hella seminal Kung-Fu Master. And it is, in turn, just as seminal, transparently influencing Super Mario Bros.--though it’s extremely amusing to note that Toru Iwatani claims that Shigeru Miyamoto told him the game had a “profound” influence on it, and Miyamoto himself sniffily claims that the only direct influence was choosing a blue background instead of a black one. Pull the other one, Shiggy!

It’s possible that this gave Namco a bit of a complex about Pac-Land, because Nintendo brought out Super Mario Bros. and by all accounts it was immediately a massive hit, and desperate to not fall behind as, after all, they bloody invented the thing, they shoved a Famicom port out of the door as quickly as possible. 

Released, as far as the dates I have here claim, just over two months after Super Mario Bros. hit on Famicom, I would fully believe that they didn’t start development on it until they saw what a hit Super Mario Bros. was, because this is absolutely dire. In fact, I think it might be one of the worst ports of a game I’ve ever, ever played. It is shite on every level.

For one, just look at the screenshot, and compare to what the arcade original looked like. Sure, you can claim that it’s too early in the Famicom/NES life-cycle for people to have got nice big sprites working while also scrolling smoothly, but the background art doesn’t even look finished (and on the Namco Museum Archives Vol. 2 version, you can see multiple bits of glitchy art if you are paying attention). The game literally just cuts seemingly in the middle of a level to get to the arcade game’s “break time” interstitials, which don’t have any of the fairy animations in them at all!

Here’s the most insane thing about it though. It’s so insane I doubt you’ll actually believe me. This came out after Super Mario Bros., and… you use the A and B buttons to move left and right and the d-pad to jump. You know, the directional pad. You use it to… jump.

What? Oh, and there’s a hidden-unless-you-remember-this-from-the-arcade run that you perform by double-tapping. I only worked this out after getting to the second level and wasting loads of time trying to do lots of precise platforming between platforms where you bump your head constantly (a bugbear) and thought it might be unfinishable.

It may as well be, really. There’s only five levels, and insultingly the level design isn’t anything like the arcade original at any point like it’s a port made for the ZX Spectrum where all they had to go on was a bunch of black-and-white faxes of polaroids taken of the game off-screen with the flash on. The first level doesn’t even feature the cars (though according to The Cutting Room Floor, they’re in there) and as the game goes on you can sense Namco panicking that people will finish it in about 20 minutes so they, I guess, innovate again by making you perform some kaizo mario-esque nonsense where you have to ride one enemy to survive a long pit and then, at the very end of the game (spoiler) you have to wait for the clock to run down, and time bouncing off the enemy that is sent to kill you to get across the last chasm!

It’d be a clever idea if the game was a) about that sort of thing and for an audience who were used to the tropes and b) not totally shite.

Will I ever play it again? I’m angered that I’ve ever played it. I look forward to playing the arcade version again one day, though.

Final Thought: I checked, and the ZX Spectrum version is sadly flick-screen rather than scrolling, though it’s probably still better than this. The Amstrad version doesn’t scroll either, but the bastarding C64 does? Boo!