The Pac-Man Post

Well, after reading Tanis' comment in the last post - I wasn't sure if she was playing a joke on me or if she was serious. One thing was clear however, there needed to be a little education on the subject. The following points are taking from my memories and plagiarized from online articles:

Immensely popular from its original release to the present day, Pac-Man is universally considered as one of the classics of the video game medium, and an icon of 1980s popular culture. When Pac-Man was released, most arcade video games in North America were primarily space shooters such as Space Invaders and Defender or Asteroids; the most visible minority were sports games (mostly derivative of PONG). Pac-Man succeeded by creating a new genre and appealing to both males and females. Pac-Man is often credited with being a landmark in video game history, and is among the most famous arcade games of all time.

The player controls Pac-Man as he moves through a maze, eating pac-dots. When all dots are eaten, Pac-Man is taken to the next stage. 4 ghosts roam the maze, trying to catch Pac-Man. If a ghost touches Pac-Man, a life is lost. When all lives have been lost, the game ends.
Near the corners of the maze are four large round power-up objects known as "energizers" or "power pellets", which provide Pac-Man with the temporary ability to eat the ghosts. The ghosts turn a deep blue and reverse direction immediately when Pac-Man eats an energizer, and they move more slowly while they are vulnerable. The ghosts are worth 200, 400, 800, and 1600 points, in sequence.

The 240 regular dots on each level are worth ten points each, and energizers are worth fifty points each. Additionally, prizes commonly referred to as "fruit" (even though several of them are not fruits) appear twice during each board just below the ghost pen — eating a fruit scores extra bonus points. The prizes change throughout the game, and their point values increase.
Pac-Man is awarded a bonus life one time only, at 10 000 points.

A perfect Pac-Man game is defined as one where the player completes all 256 levels with a maximum point score and without losing a life. The first such game was verified by the Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard on July 3, 1999. Billy Mitchell, of Hollywood, FL, achieved the feat in six hours. To attain the maximum possible score of 3,333,360 points, it was necessary for Mitchell to eat every fruit, every Power Pellet, every blue ghost and every dot for 256 boards without losing a single life.




This game technically has no end; the player will be given new boards to clear as long as Pac-Man does not lose all of his lives. However, due to a glitch in the game, the right side of the 256th board is a garbled mess of text and symbols rendering the level unplayable. This occurs because of a bug in the subroutine that draws the fruit at the bottom of the screen that indicate the current level. Normally, at most 7 fruits are displayed, regardless of the current screen, but since the level number is stored in a single byte, level 255 ("FF" in hexadecimal) rolls over to 0 in the subroutine, and 256 fruit are drawn, corrupting the bottom of the screen and the entire right half of the maze. Enthusiasts refer to this as the "Final Level," the "Split-Screen Level," or simply as the ending. Although there are claims that someone with enough knowledge of the maze pattern can play through it, it is generally considered impossible to be cleared via legitimate means.

However, in December 1982, an eight-year-old boy named Jeffrey R. Yee received a letter from U.S. President Ronald Reagan congratulating him on a worldwide record of 6,131,940 points, a score only possible if the player has passed the Split-Screen Level. Whether or not this event happened as described has remained in heated debate amongst video game circles since its supposed occurrence. In September, 1983, Walter Day, Chief Scorekeeper at the Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard, took the U.S. National Video Game Team on a tour of the East Coast to visit video game players who claimed they could get through the "Split-Screen." No video game player could demonstrate this ability. Later, in 1999, Billy Mitchell offered $100,000 to anyone who could provably pass through the Split-Screen Level before January 1, 2000; there is no evidence that anyone could.


But still, it is really good that some people have been able to clear all but a tiny corner of the maze : )

The game that dad played when he took us out on individual outings to Tops Restaurant was Ms. Pac-Man, the 1981 sequel.

The gameplay of Ms. Pac-Man is largely identical to that of Pac-Man, with a few differences:

- Ms. Pac-Man moves about the maze significantly faster than the original Pac-Man.
- There are now four different mazes, with different colors and "filled-in" walls (compared with the original Pac-Man's hollow walls). Each maze has two pairs of "warp tunnels" connecting the right and left sides of the maze (except for the third maze which only has one set of tunnels).
-The maze is changed after each of the first three intermissions.
-The ghosts have pseudo-random movement, which precludes the use of patterns to beat each board.
-The two "fruits" on each level now enter through one of the warp tunnels, wander around the maze for a while making a "thump-thump" noise, then (if not eaten) eventually leave through a warp tunnel.
-Clyde is replaced by another orange ghost named Sue.

I remember trying to get dad to play Contra with me on the Nintendo when I was a kid. I honestly thought something was wrong with him... he couldn't even run and shoot at the same time! He was really really horrible at video games... and I am fairly awesome at video games - but for some reason, to this day, I can't get anywhere near dad's score on Pac-Man. Weird.

- C