Thanks for sharingPC Engine Fan X! wrote:I recall seeing Pac-Mania at my local arcade joint except that it was the upright arcade cab that was sold/distributed by Atari Games themselves back in 1987 for the North American arcade market with the newfangled 3-Dish isometric viewpoint + highly-touted "Jump" button feature, (a first for a Pac-Man game, indeed, to avoid the dreaded ghosts).
Gone was the tell-tale and extremely responsive Wico manufactured leaf-swtich based arcade stick arrangement/setup that was prevalent with the Bally Midway manufactured Pac-Man games and in it's place the usual Atari branded clunky 4-way digital arcade joystick to control your Pac-Man character that wasn't as responsive in terms of overall gameplay/reaction time (necessary if you wanted to achieve higher scores right off the bat). I think if Atari had gone with a true "leaf-switch" based arcade stick for use with Pac-Mania, it would've fared better control-wise in retrospect. As it was for 1987, that was the type of Atari arcade controls in dealing with the USA version of Pac-Mania at that particular point in time.
There was a business agreement/arrangement between Atari and Namco back in those days, hence the exclusive rights of Atari Games to sell/distribute Pac-Mania/Assault arcade cabs (rather than Bally Midway MFG Co. with the old Pac-Man arcade IPs -- i.e.: Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man, Baby Pac-Man, Professor Pac-Man, Pac-Man Plus, Pac-Man Jr., etc.). Heck, even Namco sold/distributed Atari Games' Klax arcade pcb conversion kits in Japan back in 1990 and beyond under their own brand namesake.
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Pac-Man Factoid Time: The arcade cab oddity of Professor Pac-Man got an extremely limited distribution stateside due to it's unpopularity with the general public but it was playable at the famous Starcade arcade joint in Disneyland's Tomorrowland back in 1984.
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Cool to see the original arcade iteration of Pac-Mania finally appear in all of it's glory on the PS4 & Switch platforms. It's time to revisit it properly.
PC Engine Fan X! ^_~
I mainly played Pac-Mania on amiga, where it had surprisingly competent conversion. When I tried the emulated version (on PS2 Namco museum collection), I was surprised how much more difficult it was. Now I tried the japanese rom on ACA, and I was surprised as to how much easier it was than the western rom set. I thought that the japanese rom versions of coin ops were always the more difficult ones (Capcom and Toaplan come to mind). Apparently this is not always the case.
These dudes know their stuff. Now this is some momentous debuting. 
Third Christmas running with massive STG cachet, haha (XEXEX and Gradius III being the previous couple).
