Unsurprisingly, Pac-Man ’s platforming forays feature Ms. She’s emblematic of the coin-gobbling arcade era. Google, The Simpsons, Futurama, and many other works honor Ms. A canceled spin-off, Puzzle Club, would have also included her. Pac-Man’s cameo in its credits sequence is surprisingly preserved in last year’s Museum+), and Pac-Man World Rally. Pac-Man Carnival, Pac ‘N Party, Pac-Attack, and Pac-Man Pinball Advance incorporate her, and she competes in Pac-Man Fever, Pac-Man: Adventures in Time, the 2005 Pac-Man Arrangement (re-releases of this game cut its multiplayer mode, though Ms. Pac-Man, Baby Pac-Man, and Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures. Pac-Man instantly became a franchise mainstay. Pac-Man’s beauty mark, survived, and she was capped off with a red bow. His first take on her gave the budding mascot “shoulder-length red hair,” something then-Namco president Masaya Nakamura disliked (though Macrae believes Namco harbored some “embarrassment” over not handing Pac-Man ’s successor internally, he stresses that they were entirely supportive of Ms. Pac-Man ’s artwork, stabilizing its star’s design. She can briefly turn the tables on her aggressors by eating Power Pellets. Pac-Man ’s lead roams ghost-infested labyrinths while munching dots. was the new thing.” Additionally, Pac-Man was popular with women Midway’s Stan Jarocki said they were “ thanking all those lady arcaders who have played and enjoyed Pac-Man ” through this new protagonist. Artist Mike Horowitz, whose wife didn’t take his last name, notes the prominence of the woman’s rights movement during the Eighties “Ms. Briefly, it was also Pac-Woman before Ms. Over the course of “just two weeks,” it evolved into Super Pac-Man and then Miss Pac-Man. “Why don’t we turn this into a male and female Pac character, and build a bit more personality into them?”Īfterwards, GCC, Midway, and Namco began converting Crazy Otto into a proper Pac-Man title. “Wow, we’ve got a whole storyline here about how a character meets a red character that’s female,” Macrae recalls discussing. (Image: Bandai Namco/AtGames)Īccording to former GCC developer Steve Golson and chairman Doug Macrae, Crazy Otto ’s cinematics -where Otto meets, courts, and has a baby with a female member of his species-were instrumental in influencing its makeover. ” Namco’s internally-developed Pac-Man sequel would later use that moniker. Initially, Midway suggested reworking Crazy Otto into “ Super Pac-Man. Considering Pac-Man ’s overwhelming success, Midway was ecstatic about publishing a sequel, especially since Namco’s own follow-up was progressing slowly. Seeking to salvage Crazy Otto, GCC met with Pac-Man ’s Western manufacturer, Midway.

They were also embroiled in a lawsuit with Atari GCC had modified Atari’s Missile Command into Super Missile Attack, and the resulting settlement prevented the studio from altering any other games unless their original manufacturers were consulted. Over four decades ago, General Computer Corporation began working on an edited version of Pac-Man called Crazy Otto. It graced arcades exactly forty one years ago today, two years after its forebear, and developed a venerable legacy of its own… Ms. Unsurprisingly, one of the games that successfully built upon Pac-Man ’s groundbreaking formula was its sequel, Ms. Several Pac-Man knockoffs hit during the Eighties, few of which carry any prestige today (I doubt you’ll find many fan tributes celebrating Streaking ).

Pac-Man, seen in re-releases of her eponymous debut game (Image: Bandai Namco/AtGames)

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