Today's game: Pac-Land
Bus-jumping. The new sport that storms Pac-Land by surprise.
Considered the ancestor of all "Post-Pitfall" platforming games like Super Mario Bros. and Alex Kidd, Pac-Land ditches the maze mechanics in favor of an unexplored new territory: Action Platforming. The simple and pure thrill of running your way to the end while avoiding enemies and potential traps and obstacles. Namco got that idea and put it on practice pretty well on this game, as we can control Pac-Man's speed by pressing the directional button twice. For some reason, Namco thought that having running buttons was more functional than the traditional control stick, while this gives a sense of experimentation, the idea of pressing Left Run or Right Run is quite awkward going against the basic aspects of character control. But for this game, you only needed to run left or right. However, tapping the directional buttons twice changes Pac-Man's pace from jog to fast running. While the premise and objective of the game looks simple, there's some hidden secrets that will provide you some help in your mission. For instance, there is some objects that you can push to reveal items like helmets to protect Pac-Man against the mini-ghosts dropped by the planes, also each mini ghost that hits the helmet grants you 300 points. Sometimes jumping on the hydrants will reveal hidden cherries for a while which you can pick for a few extra points, but the game retains at least one element of the classic Pac-Man games and that's the Power Pellet which allows you to eat ghosts and for the first time in the series, it breaks the 1600 limit to a staggering 3200 points after eating the 5th ghost. However, you can't waste time since you have a timer which is both your death if it runs out, but also another Bonus score rewarding feature when the level is completed in time.
Bonus rewarding aims high for Pac-Man.
To complete this vast collection of secrets, there's a "Jump bonus" during the "BREAK TIME" which consists on jumping as the level clear plays. Depending on how high's Pac-Man jumping at the moment of the freeze frame, that will be the bonus, from a few hundreds to 7,650 points. Also, in the Japanese version, the game grants you a bonus point boost depending on which Trip you want to start playing, but you have to clear it in order to get the bonus. This feature was removed from the overseas version of the game for unspecified reasons.
One of those "Do-or-Die" moments in the Pac-'hood.
"Room for Error" is almost unexistant in this game. Whenever you want to make a correction, the new ghost Sue will be right behind you, and this makes difficulty slight unfair since it removes all possibilities of "Error Correction", like the double decker buses in stage 5, jump too early you're dead, too late you're dead, you have to be precise which is hard with Sue chasing you. This makes a turn for the worse in the areas with springboards, as you want to go back and gain speed for that perfect jump but NO!, Sue is already behind Pac-Man forcing you to do the jump and hope for the best. Also, the springboard jump is one of those fucked up moments in gaming, because you'll normally think you only need a perfect jump, but instead you'll see how Pac-Man splashes down to his demise. So you'll think "How do I make him jump longer?" you try to press and hold the jump button by pure instinct but it doesn't work, tapping it like the fire button on Blazing Star, and doesn't work either. Before you give up, ¿Guess what? The solution is tapping the Right Run button like crazy until he reaches the ground. I don't believe it myself, that's an incredibly unusual and unexpected move for a platform game, not to mention, the cabinet doesn't bother to hint you about that detail. But things get messed up on Round 29, the game requires you to cross an EXTREMELY LARGE lake, but there's no springboard to jump on. ¿How're you gonna cross it? Take a wild guess...You have to jump on top of the planes piloted by the ghosts. That's right, you have to hitch a ride on their planes and you have to land on top of Sue's head to hitch a plane.
Show-Accurate Redesign. Only for the American release.
Pac-Land had some changes on the international releases. While the Japanese version had Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man and Pac-Baby based on Namco's promotional material, the Bally-Midway version reworked the sprites in order to make them resemble the characters from the Hanna-Barbera Pac-Man cartoon and added Sour Puss and Chomp Chomp running around in Pac-Man's home, not to mention they also appear as replacement for the fairies in the "Player Ready" screen. Unfortunately, the international releases had some slight censorship. At the end of the stages, there's a church with a Christian/Catholic cross. While the cross appears in the Japanese release, the overseas versions removed them (and that was years before Nintendo of America's "No-no's" about religious imagery).
Home ports were limited to a few PC conversions and a Japan only release for the Famicom. Being the Namco Museum and Pac-Man Museum compilations the only way to play this in the American market, until the Arcade Archives series releases this game as part of the Namco releases on the lineup. The Arcade Archives version only has the Japanese ROM for the Original Mode, ditching the Midway version since they're not gonna pay to NetherRealm Studios for licensing. In a twist of irony, the Arcade Archives port, while it is based on the Japanese version, is actually a mixed bag of content because the character sprites are based on Namco's promotional artworks, but at the same time it carries the church censorship from the Bally-Midway port.
It's Hayden Christensen's ghost in Return of the Jedi all over again.
Things go stranger as you keep on playing. While the Arcade Archives ports aim for 100% arcade perfection in graphics and sounds, Namco's dot-muncher platforming adventure suffered some unexpected and unusual changes, and is not the first time this shit happens. In Arcade Archives Pac-Man, the game's based on the japanese Puckman ROM, but the Press Start screen calls him Pac-Man like in the Midway release, probably to avoid the "Fuckman" joke in this attempt of slight censorship. But in Pac-Land's case, they went too far going into "Anti-Gaming History" grounds. When Pac-Man makes his way back home, the one's waiting for him are Pac-Mom and Pac-Sis, removing Ms. Pac-Man and Pac-Baby entirely. While I understand the changes on the Bally-Midway version for the sake of cartoon-accuracy and still made sense because she was STILL Ms. Pac-Man, I could DEFINITELY say the Arcade Archives edition is EXACTLY like Piko's Evercade release of Barkley Shut up and Jam! series where it was renamed as Hoops: Shut up and Jam! and changed Charles Barkley's head with a generic looking character named Joe Hoops. In both cases this goes against videogame preservation in so many levels and this Pac-Mom shit goes beyond Pac-Land as Bandai-Namco removed all traces of Ms. Pac-Man from all the titles of Pac-Man Museum+ and Pac-Man World Re-Pac where she made an apperance or a cameo.
The most resounding reason among the Pac-Fans on the 'net is the copyright dispute with AtGames since they're in part co-owners of Ms. Pac-Man after picking GCC (General Computer Corporation, or "GenComp") and Namco has to pay royalties to them everytime the character is used, including this game. Ironically, BNEI hasn't spoke about the changes or the reason behind them (that's what I call "cowards"). It is hard to believe that BNEI let this happened when they had all what is necessary to release the game without changing Ms. Pac-Man. ¿What was necessary? Simple: Bandai-Namco buying AtGames and all of Ms. Pac-Man related assets, problem solved. Also, these "Pac-Changes" worries me a bit more, 'cos what would happen if BNEI wants to release a game what now needs licenses, they will inevitably had to make changes in order to avoid copyright problems. For instance, Fighter & Attacker. Re-releasing it in Arcade Archives would mean Namco dealing with Northrop-Grumman, Lockheed-Martin, Dassault Aviation, Panavia and Boeing over the use of the aircraft in the game. ¿Can you imagine Fighter & Attacker with the jets edited out and replaced with the original aircraft from the Ace Combat series? A sprite change like that would kill a part of the game, right? After the Pac-Mom controversy, we can only pray this doesn't happen.
To close the gameplay section, I'll just say this reminds me of what the Twitter user RetroNova said about these present day copyright and censorship changes.
RetroNova wrote:This is the future of retro gaming. A lot of these old games and franchises will have to be watered down to comply with censorship or copyright issues or just end up lost and forgotten to time or at least exclusive to emulators. It's not something I'm looking forward to..
Foreground blocking. 11 Years before Batman Forever.
When it comes to graphics, is a mix of opinions. The animation given to Pac-Man is very fluid and fast enough to give the impression he's actually running rather than following a two or three sprites sequence to evoke moment, while the backgrounds look simple in some aspects like the trees, but basically detailed on the buildings and their exposed blocks it is enough for the game to resemble an animated cartoon which is what this game aims to look like, an interactive cartoon where the player takes control of the main protagonist, making this the predecessor of "Interactive Cartoons" like MTV's Beavis and Butt-Head in Virtual Stupidity, the Sam & Max series, Cuphead and even Spidersaurs. Not to mention Pac-Land is a more playable interactive cartoon than Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures/Hello! Pac-Man. The sound department features one track: the main theme of Hanna-Barbera's Pac-Man cartoon. It is kinda nice to see Namco decided to keep the theme song rather than changing it due to copyright grounds (I'm sure BNEI at least can easily pay licensing to Warner Bros. Discovery for this one if something happens).
PAC-TRIVIALAND
- This is the first Pac-Man game that used a different control scheme for directions.
- According to the programmer Yoshihiro Kishimoto, the game was influenced by Konami's Hyper Olympic (Track & Field). Kishimoto will later develop the Family Stadium series of sports games.
- Pac-Land was also the last official Pac-Man title released by Bally-Midway prior to their license termination with Namco.
- 300 of the overall cabinets built were originally meant for Pac-Man & Chomp Chomp, the cancelled US release of Pac & Pal.
- Pac-Land was the 19th Namco game released on Arcade Archives.
- It is also the third Pac-Man game released as part of Arcade Archives.
The Emilie Scale is in a stalemate.
It's a great arcade classic, but the controversial changes in Arcade Archives are...ugh!
Overall, it was nice to have a well emulated arcade port of this piece of history, but the Pac-Mom and Pac-Sis fiasco simply kills the old-school memories that many of us we have. So, the best we can do is to avoid buying this game along with the censored Pac-Man re-releases to express our disgust towards these absurd changes.
