Namco Pac-Man
This article is a generic description of Namco's 8-bit "Pac-Man" hardware. For the specific arcade game, see Pac-Man.
The Namco Pac-Man was an 8-bit arcade game system board, which was first used by Namco in 1980; the second and third games to run on it, Rally-X and New Rally-X, were modified to support a larger color palette and scrolling. Three unauthorized Pac-Man sequels were later developed by Bally Midway, Namco's old US distributor, on this board between 1981 and 1983 - and after Namco ended their partnerships with them after the release of Pac-Land in 1984, they developed Jump Shot (a basketball simulation) and Shoot the Bull (a darts game) on it, in the following year.
Namco Pac-Man specifications
- Main CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 3.072 MHz[1]
- Instruction set: 8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 460,000 instructions per second[2]
- Sound chip: Namco WSG (Waveform Sound Generator)[3]
- Sample-based synthesis: 3-channels of single-cycle wavetable-lookup synthesis, 4-bit waveform samples[4]
- GPU: Namco NVC293 video shifter[5]
- Video resolution: 224×288 (Pac-Man) or 288×224 (Rally-X and New Rally-X have the monitor turned on its side)[6]
- Frame rate: 60.61 frames per second[7]
- ROM: 16 KB (Pac-Man,[1] Rally-X[5]), 22 KB (Ali Baba and 40 Thieves),[8] 32 KB (Jungler)[5]
- RAM: 4 KB (Pac-Man) to 6 KB (Rally-X)
- Color depth: 8-bit (256 colors),[6] 9-bit (512 colors),[8] 10-bit (1024 colors)[9]
- Colors on screen: 16 (Pac-Man),[10] 32 (Pengo),[9] 64 (Rally-X)[5]
- Graphical planes:
List of Namco Pac-Man arcade games
- Pac-Man (1980) - the highest-grossing game of all time[12]
- Rally-X (1980) - the first game to feature a bonus round
- New Rally-X (1981)
- Ms. Pac-Man (1981) - unauthorized title created by Midway Games; the rights were later turned over to Namco
- Pac-Man Plus (1982) - unauthorized title created by Bally Midway; the rights to this title are in limbo
- Jr. Pac-Man (1983) - unauthorized title created by Bally Midway; the rights to this title are in limbo
- New Puck-X (1980) - hack of Pac-Man
- Newpuc2 (1980) - hack of Pac-Man
- Caterpillar Pac-Man (Phi, 1981) - hack of Pac-Man
- Crush Roller (also known as Make Trax) (Kural Samno Electric, 1981)
- Hangly-Man (1981) - hack of Pac-Man
- Magic Brush (1981) - bootleg of Crush Roller
- Ms. Pac-Attack (1981) - hack of Ms. Pac-Man
- Ms. Pac-Man Plus (1981) - hack of Ms. Pac-Man
- Naughty Mouse (Amenip Nova Games Ltd., 1981)
- Pac-Gal (1981) - hack of Ms. Pac-Man
- Paint Roller (1981) - bootleg of Crush Roller
- Piranha (GL, 1981) - hack of Pac-Man
- Abscam (GL, 1982) - hack of Pac-Man
- Ali Baba and 40 Thieves (Sega, 1982)
- Pengo (Sega, 1982)
- Dream Shopper (Sanritsu, 1982)
- Eyes (Digitrex Techstar, 1982)
- Joyman (1982) - hack of Pac-Man
- Ponpoko (Sigma Enterprises Inc., 1982)
- Atlantic City Action (Epos Corporation, 1983)
- Boardwalk Casino (Epos Corporation, 1983)
- Eggor (Telko, 1983)
- Gorkans (Techstar, 1983)
- Mr. TNT (Telko, 1983)
- The Glob (Epos Corporation, 1983)
- Van-Van Car (Sanritsu, 1983)
- Beastie Feastie (Epos Corporation, 1984)
- Driving Force (Shinkai Inc., 1984) - another version also exists on Namco Galaxian hardware
- Eight Ball Action (Seatongrove Ltd., 1985)
- Jump Shot (Bally Midway, 1985)
- Lizard Wizard (Techstar, 1985)
- Porky (Shinkai Inc., 1985)
- Shoot the Bull (Bally Midway, 1985)
- Big Bucks (Dynasoft Inc., 1986)
- Ms. Pac-Man Champion Edition (also known as Super Zola Pac-Gal) (1995) - hack of Ms. Pac-Man
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 Nick Montfort & Ian Bogost (2009), Racing the beam: the Atari Video computer system, MIT Press, p. 67, ISBN 0-262-01257-X, retrieved 2011-05-07
- ↑ http://www.drolez.com/retro/
- ↑ http://system16.com/hardware.php?id=514
- ↑ https://github.com/mamedev/mame/tree/master/src/emu/sound/namco.c
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 http://web.archive.org/web/20130104063950/http://mamedev.org/source/src/mame/drivers/rallyx.c.html
- 1 2 Nick Montfort & Ian Bogost (2009), Racing the beam: the Atari Video computer system, MIT Press, p. 68, ISBN 0-262-01257-X, retrieved 2011-05-07
- 1 2 http://www.lomont.org/Software/Games/PacMan/PacmanEmulation.pdf
- 1 2 3 https://github.com/mamedev/mame/tree/master/src/mame/drivers/pacman.c
- 1 2 https://web.archive.org/web/20130104201358/http://mamedev.org/source/src/mame/video/pacman.c.html
- ↑ http://aarongiles.com/mamemem/part3.html
- ↑ http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=DqePfdz_x6gC&pg=PA70
- ↑ Steve L. Kent (2001), The ultimate history of video games: from Pong to Pokémon and beyond: the story behind the craze that touched our lives and changed the world, Prima, p. 143, ISBN 0-7615-3643-4, retrieved 2011-05-01,
Despite the success of his game, Iwatani never received much attention. Rumors emerged that the unknown creator of Pac-Man had left the industry when he received only a $3500 bonus for creating the highest-grossing video game of all time.
External links
- Namco Pac-Man hardware page at System16.com - The Arcade Museum
- Midway Pac-Man hardware page at System16.com - The Arcade Museum
- Pac-Man’s code disassembled and commented, by Mark Longridge
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