#Pac-man

[prokopetz]

I know the character isn't really going to be returning any time soon due to Bandai Namco's continuing mission to screw as many people out of royalties as they possibly can, but I choose to believe Shadow Labyrinth is just what Ms. Pac-Man has been up to during her hiatus.

[strangererotica]

[hatsampixie]

Got inspired by an ep from the 1980's Pac-Man cartoon, and made this concept.

[robotics5]

Alright so everyone knows white is the classic wedding color, with black suits being common too, but what if you want something more exciting for more than two people?

Ta-da!

Honestly I was just thinking about RGB for me and my gfs and then I started getting ideas for how to apply this farther

[retrogamingblog2]

Pac-man easter egg in the subway in Stockholm, Sweden

[humanoidhistory]

Tabletop Pac-Man in Amsterdam, 1984. Photo by Han Singels.

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Pac-Man

Debut: a box

We all know Pac-Man in the game. You know Pac-Man in the game. I do not need to explain what he looks like to you, and I am so confident in your knowledge that I simply will not. You know that guy.

Now let's instead look at and talk about Hiro Kimura's interpretation of him as depicted on the Atari 400/800 box art! Let's make this our default vision of the character!

This is Pac-Man. Pac-Man is a striking yellow humanoid with a massive, spherical head, no nose, and a set of rodent-like upper incisors. He's wearing a tank top with his in-game design on it, sneakers with high socks, and, best of all, jorts!

This design DOES register enough as a Pac-Man to me, but aside from how goofy he already is, I can't help but think of him as a Stanley S. SquarePants-style cousin to the original Pac-Man. It's almost uncanny how similar the duos are!

Now, an issue I have with many Ms. Pac-Man designs is that, unlike her husband, she is often given a tiny mouth, not a mouth befitting a woman who eats for a living. How is this Pac-fella's mouth? A bit small, but not as small as the bites he's taking out of those floating plastic discs! I guess it's as much as he can get with that narrow set of teeth.

But geez, reaching for another when he's barely made any progress in the first? I hope he doesn't choke! Since this is a still image, I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he is able to chew through these discs like a woodchipper, and we just happen to see the frozen moment where only the first bite was taken. He can turn these macroplastics into microplastics like nobody's business!

And I guess he's in some kind of castle labyrinth, and the ghosts are trying to eat him, specifically. They think he looks Yummy, and I will have to take their word for it. I would not eat this guy, OR his plastic discs! However, there is a reason I am glossing over these ghosts. They're nothing in comparison to... the others.

Yowza in the howza! My word, and then my entire sentence! The ghosts on the unused Atari 2600 cover art (also by Hiro Kimura) are certainly the most viscerally frightening things any Pac has ever had to contend with. It's quite impressive, really! I can see why this art would be replaced, since it is frankly not an accurate representation of the game itself, but dang am I happy just to look at it. The Pacmeister here is very similar to the previous one, but this time, clad in perfect, stainless chrome, for some reason! I'd want to eat this version even less than the previous one.

What I WOULD like to eat, though, are those rectangular prisms he's munching. To me, those are delectable baked lemon bars. I'm also realizing that there's a frog hopping away from the chaos in the bottom right! Strange... perhaps a cheeky Frogger reference? Like, get outta here, Frogger, Pac-Man is better, and it's illegal to like multiple things at once? Well I like BOTH of these wacky box arts! If Capcom can use Bad Box Art Mega Man in a game, perhaps I can hope for Pac-Stanley to return in an amazing digital fashion...?

[vintage-tech]

Atari lore is that there were more copies of Pac-Man produced than Atari 2600 units to play them, and when including Pac-Man as a pack-in game alongside Combat wasn't depleting the stack fast enough -- and E.T. was also over-produced and underwhelming --- tons of these titles were dumped in a landfill in the Alamogordo, New Mexico desert with some other overstock. Pac-Man and E.T. were examples of games rushed to market which, no offense to Tod Frye or HSW, needed a bit more time and programming trickery to be what they were being promoted as and having good gameplay.

What I'm getting to here is that there's no unsealed copy of Atari 2600 Pac-Man (which wasn't excavated) that is worth $100.

[zoohouseart]

A color wheel of game characters I grew up with.

[gameraboy2]

"Pac-Man Demands a Sacrifice!" Photo by Michael N. Marks for Vidiot, April-May, 1983

[tvneon]

[dd-the-man-without-fear]

You guys won't believe what teaser is this for

[artist-block-alley]

Now that's an odd, very angry looking balloon... Couldn't let the day end without celebrating proper, happy 44th Pac!

[gaymer-hag-stan]

Of course Lara Croft is more iconic than Mario, Sonic, Link and the rest, you can cry about it all you want in the replies on Twitter but it's the truth.

She's the most successful woman to ever hit video games.

She jump-started the action adventure genre.

She revolutionised 3D gaming.

She inspired tons of imitations and her likeness (dual pistols, long braid, blue tank top + brown pants combo) continues to be applied to various degrees in female characters to this day.

She has stayed relevant across decades.

She was the very first and only video game character to become a pop culture icon and be treated as a celebrity in the 90s, appearing in magazine covers, advertisements for Séat, Lucozade, Visa etc., touring with U2 and having her own publicist.

She has won multiple Guinness awards.

She has been portrayed by two Oscar-winning actresses.

Her games have been extremely successful, both critically and commercially, and she has outlived her main and only competitor, Nathan Drake.

Lara Croft IS video games. It's just facts

[retrogamingblog2]

Forgotten Gaming by Filip Hodas