A Pac-Man Mini Joins the Arcade
- Cassie
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
I have been somewhat lazy around updates of the goings on with my collection recently. I could blame a busy work schedule (I work as a first responder) along with having about 45 other projects going on at any given time. Despite these paper thin excuses, let me present you with the arcade’s newest edition this very nicely preserved mini Pac-Man.
Going into the vast history of Pac-Man here would be a fool hardy endeavor. I can assure you others have written far better analysis of the cultural impact around Pac-Man than I could ever dream of. My nostalgia for Pac does run strong, I can’t think about the pizza chain Pizza Hut without envisioning the oblatory Pac-Man cocktail machine in the corner of every 80’s location and begging my Mom for quarters to play. For those readers who didn’t grow up in the 80’s it is difficult to explain the massive pop culture impact Pac-Man had during the early 1980’s in the US. Well, at least until that famous mushroom eating plumber stole the “King of Video Games Crown” away from our yellow friend by 1985-86.
I was about eight years-old when Pac-Man was released in the USA. Pac-Man Fever came on like a wave like COVID for your quarters. Soon after it’s arrival every retail outlet was slathered in Pac stickers, shirts, air fresheners, books, puzzles, and any cheap plastic trinket that could slap Pac-Man’s image on. Some of the less official Pac mech is particularly hilarious including my personal favorite those prize mirrors you could win at carnival games which may or may not have been meant for cocaine use.
The other famous bit of Pac lore is of course, the disappointing Atari 2600 home version of the game. I grew up with a 2600, and most of my friends had them as well. The excitement over the game’s arrival along with the disappointment of the results is factual. Although to be honest, with so many other games were around at the time (including decent Pac ripoffs for my TRS-80 Color Computer and my friend’s C-64) it didn’t really bother me that much. For me Pac-Man was always an arcade experience and still is today. It’s the difference between watching 2001: A Space Odyssey at home or watching it in a big Cinerama movie theatre, the environment somehow helps with the magic. There is something magical about having that official red topped joystick and the close glow of the CRT monitor for an authentic Pac experience.
I bought this little Pac from a fellow collector in Florida, which was adorned with Jr. Pac-Man internals and externals upon arrival. I do like Jr. Pac, but I decided to return the game back to its original form factor out of pure collecting snobbery. Jr. Pac changes zero of the internal components of the machine other than a PCB switch out. I already had a freshly rebuilt Pac PCB (regular speed, no mods) ready to go along with a nice reproduction control panel I bought years ago for a project that never surfaced. The well done reproduction marquee and bezel came from Phoenix Arcade. Replacing these items is a simple affair of a few screws.
The game is in fantastic condition overall, a real survivor. Nothing is hacked up, there is no water damage, it still has the original monitor, and even has an original tax sticker from the 80’s. The game’s leg levelers were replaced at some point with wheels which I don’t really care for (it tends to make it a bit tipsy if moved). At some point I will replace them with proper levelers. It could still use a decent cleaning inside but hey, that is authentic vintage grime!
Bally-Midway made somewhere between 150-300k Pac-Man machines in the standard upright, cocktail, and cabaret variants depending on what you read. This does not include the countless bootleg versions, versions sold overseas from other companies, or very similar rip off games. At one point, Bally-Midway was even planning on selling a home version of the game for high end catalogs. The cabaret (or Mini-Myte per the wording on their official advert for the game) is by far the rarest of the three styles of cabinets with production likely being under 5,000 units manufactured.
Pac-Man joins my well loved Ms. Pac-Man upright and Super Pac-Man upright (currently with Pac & Pal installed) in the collection. That means 8.1% of my arcade collection consists of Pac games. Playing old school regular Pac-Man (using the 1st original ROM set with no speed up hack) is an amazing throw back. My first shock was that the game gets pretty hard pretty quickly. I play Ms. Pac a lot, and I am used to how ghosts react in that game which is somewhat different than regular Pac. Pac-Man ghosts behavior is mostly defending specific areas of the maze, where Ms. Pac the ghosts have more “personality”.
"In the original version of Pac-Man, ghosts move on a complex but deterministic route, so it is possible to learn a deterministic action sequence that does not require any observations. Many such patterns were found by enthusiastic players. In most of Pac-Man's sequels, most notably in Ms. Pac-Man, randomness was added to the movement of the ghosts. This way, there is no single optimal action sequence, observations are necessary for optimal decision making. In other respects, game play was mostly unchanged.”
Article: Learning to Play Using Low-Complexity Rule-Based Policies: Illustrations through Ms. Pac-Man
Ms.Pac-Man is more of a reaction game, where Pac-Man is either a game in which you can remember patterns to avoid ghosts to achieve success. At least this is my opinion of gameplay techniques, I have no doubt seasoned players would disagree with me to the ends of time. What isn’t up for disagreement is the importance of Pac-Man in both he history of video games and pop culture. Over 45 years later Pac-Man still bops along with new versions and shoddy merch, hail to the original King of the Arcade.
