Pac-Man: Difference between revisions

[[Image:pacman title na.png|224px|thumb|North American ''Pac-Man'' title screen, showing the official ghostmonster names.]]

The player controls Pac-Man through a [[maze]], eating pac-dots. When all [[dot]]s are eaten, Pac-Man is taken to the next [[level (gaming)|stage]]. Four [[ghostmonster]]s (Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde) roam the maze, trying to catch Pac-Man. If a ghostmonster touches Pac-Man, a [[life (gaming)|life]] is lost. When all lives have been lost, the game ends. Pac-Man is awarded a single [[bonus life]] at 10,000 points by default—[[DIP switch]]es inside the machine can change the required points or disable the bonus life altogether.

Near the corners of the maze are four larger, flashing dots known as [[power-up|power pellets]] that provide Pac-Man with the temporary ability to eat the ghostsmonsters. The ghostsmonsters turn deep blue, reverse direction, and usually move more slowly. When a ghostmonster is eaten, its [[eye]]s remain and return to the [[spawning (video gaming)|ghostmonster homebox]] where it is regenerated in its normal color. Blue ghostsmonsters flash white before they become dangerous again and the amount of time the ghostsmonsters remain vulnerable varies from one board to the next, but the time period generally becomes shorter as the game progresses. In later stages, the ghostsmonsters do not change colors at all, but still reverse direction when a power pellet is eaten.

In addition to Pac-dots and power pellets, bonus items, usually referred to as fruits (though not all items are [[fruit]]s) appear near the center of the maze. These items score extra bonus points when eaten. The items change and bonus values increase throughout the game. Also, a series of [[intermission]]s play after certain levels toward the beginning of the game, showing a humorous set of interactions (the first being after level 2) between Pac-Man and Blinky (the red ghostmonster).

===GhostsMonsters===

The ghostsmonsters are bound by the maze in the same way as Pac-Man, but generally move slightly faster than the player, although they slow down when turning corners and slow down significantly while passing through the [[wraparound (video games)|wraparound]] tunnels on the sides of the maze (Pac-Man passes through these tunnels unhindered). Pac-Man slows down slightly while eating dots, potentially allowing a chasing ghostmonster to catch him.

Blinky, the red ghostmonster, also speeds up after a certain number of dots are eaten (this number gets lower in higher levels).

The ghostsmonsters are introduced during [[attract mode]] by the following names and nicknames:

! rowspan=2 | GhostMonster Color

|Clyde <!-- NOTE: Please do not change this to "Sue" - that is the orange ghostmonster's name in Ms. Pac-Man, not this game. -->

A ghostmonster always maintains its current direction until it reaches an intersection, at which point it can turn left or right. Periodically, the ghostsmonsters will reverse direction and head for the corners of the maze (commonly referred to as "scatter mode"), before reverting to their normal behavior. In an interview, Iwatani stated that he had designed each ghostmonster with its own distinct personality in order to keep the game from becoming impossibly difficult or boring to play.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Mateas|first=Michael|title=Expressive AI: Games and Artificial Intelligence|url=http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~mateas/publications/MateasDIGRA2003.pdf|year=2003|journal=Proceedings of Level Up: Digital Games Research Conference, Utrecht, Netherlands|format=PDF}}</ref> The behaviors of each ghostmonster have been exactly determined by reverse-engineering the game.<ref>[http://home.comcast.net/~jpittman2/pacman/pacmandossier.html The Pac-Man Dossier, Jamey Pittman] Ch. 4</ref>

Despite the seemingly random nature of some of the ghostsmonsters, their movements are strictly deterministic, enabling experienced players to devise precise sequences of movements for each level (termed "patterns") that allow them to complete the levels without ever being caught. A later revision of the game code altered the ghostsmonsters' behavior, but new patterns were soon developed for that behavior as well. Players have also learned how to exploit other flaws in the ghostsmonsters' behavior, including finding places where they can hide indefinitely without moving, and a code bug occasionally allows Pac-Man to pass through a non-blue ghostmonster unharmed. Several patterns have been developed to exploit this bug. The bug arises from the fact that the game logic performs collision detection based on ghostmonster / Pac-Man occupancy of grid squares, where the grid squares are large relative to the size of the characters. A character occupies (for collision detection purposes) only one grid square ("tile") at a time, despite its graphic depiction overflowing to another tile. If a ghostmonster and Pac-Man switch tiles with each other simultaneously (which is not a rare phenomenon, because the tiles granularity is large), a collision isn't detected.<ref name="dossier">[http://home.comcast.net/~jpittman2/pacman/pacmandossier.html The Pac-Man Dossier, Jamey Pittman] Ch. 3</ref>

Through tinkering, the details of the corruption can be revealed. Some [[Read-only memory|ROMs]] of the game are equipped with a "rack test" feature that can be accessed through the game's DIP switches. This feature automatically clears a level of all dots as soon as it begins, making it easier to reach the 256th level very quickly, as well as allowing players to see what would happen if the 256th level is cleared (the game loops back to the first level, causing fruits and intermissions to display as before, but with the ghostsmonsters retaining their higher speed and invulnerability to power pellets from the later stages). When the rack test is performed in an [[emulator]], a person can more easily analyze the corruption in this level.<ref name="corruption_analysis"/>

Pac-Man and the ghostsmonsters can move freely throughout the right half of the screen, barring some fractured pieces of the maze. Despite claims that someone with enough knowledge of the maze pattern could play through the level, it is technically impossible to complete since the graphical corruption eliminates most of the dots on the right half of the maze. A few edible dots are scattered in the corrupted area, and these dots reset when the player loses a life (unlike in the uncorrupted areas), but these are insufficient to complete the level. As a result, the level has been given a number of names, including "the Final Level", "the Blind-Side", and the ending. It is known more generally as a [[kill screen]].

''[[Pac-Man Vs.]]'' is a version of the game which allows competitive play among multiple participants; it cannot be played alone. One player takes the role of Pac-Man and is pursued by the other players' ghostsmonsters. When one of the ghostsmonsters catches Pac-Man, the level starts anew and the two players exchange roles - the player who was playing Pac-Man becomes a ghostmonster and the player who caught him now becomes Pac-Man. In order to make the game fair, the players acting as ghostsmonsters are presented with only a limited view of the maze (rendered in a 3D view, quite unlike the original) and the Pac-Man's player sees the full classical top-down view. The game continues with players swapping roles until one of them wins the match by reaching a predetermined number of points. The basic gameplay is basically similar to the original - the ghostsmonsters can't eat the dots and the tables are turned on them when Pac-Man eats a power-pill. ''[[Pac-Man Vs.]]'' has been released for the [[Nintendo GameCube]] (this required a [[Game Boy Advance]] and [[Nintendo GameCube Game Boy Advance Cable|special cable]]), [[Nintendo DS]] (wirelessly between 2 - 4 DS consoles) and has seen Japanese release on mobile phones (using bluetooth connectivity).

A group of students from the computer science department of [[Simon Fraser University]] had developed a "life-sized" ''Pac-Man'' system, using laptops and [[mobile phone tracking]] to track the location of the dots, ghostmonsters, and Pac-Man. It has become a regular activity of Computer Science Frosh Week, and is usually played in [[Downtown Vancouver]].<ref>{{cite web|first=Dominic |last=Lau |url=http://www.cs.sfu.ca/news/index.cgi/articles/2007-11-15-1.html |title=Pacman in Vancouver |publisher=SFU Computing Science |date= |accessdate=2009-07-03}}</ref>

The Pac-man board game is a turn based action game. There are 4 Pac-mans and 2 ghostsmonsters included in the game. Their colors are yellow, green, blue, and red.{{Citation needed|date=January 2010}}

[[Guinness World Records]] has awarded the ''Pac-Man'' series eight records in ''Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition 2008'', including "First Perfect Pac-Man Game" for [[Billy Mitchell (gamer)|Billy Mitchell]]'s [[#Perfect play|July 3, 1999 score]]; "Most Successful Coin-Operated Game"; and "Largest Pac-Man Game", when, in 2004, students from [[New York University]] created [[Pac-Manhattan]], a real life reenactment of the game, in which people dressed as Pac-Man and the four ghostsmonsters chased each other around [[Manhattan]] city blocks. Each player was teamed with a controller who communicated the player's positions using [[cellular phone]]s.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.pacmanhattan.com/about.php |title=About Pac-Manhattan |publisher=Pac-Manhattan |year=2004 |accessdate=2009-07-03}}</ref>

*[http://www.mameworld.net/pacman/ Pac-Man Guide]{{Dead link|url=http://www.mameworld.net/pacman/|date=November 2009}} at MameWorld. In-depth strategy guide, including basic techniques, chase patterns and ghostmonster behavior.

*[http://home.comcast.net/~jpittman2/pacman/pacmandossier.html The Pac-Man Dossier]. A complete description of ghostmonster behavior and gameplay via source code analysis and studied observation, including additional information on the split screen, the collision bug, and the Namco easter egg.