Neha Patil (Editor)

Namco Pac Man

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The Namco Pac-Man was an 8-bit arcade game system board that 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 its partnership with Bally Midway after the release of Pac-Land in 1984, it developed Jump Shot (a basketball simulation) and Shoot the Bull (a darts game) on it, in the following year.

Contents

Namco Pac-Man specifications

  • Main CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 3.072 MHz
  • Instruction set: 8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 460,000 instructions per second
  • Sound chip: Namco WSG (Waveform Sound Generator)
  • Sample-based synthesis: 3-channels of single-cycle wavetable-lookup synthesis, 4-bit waveform samples
  • GPU: Namco NVC293 video shifter
  • Video resolution: 224×288 (Pac-Man) or 288×224 (Rally-X and New Rally-X have the monitor turned on its side)
  • Frame rate: 60.61 frames per second
  • ROM: 16 KB (Pac-Man, Rally-X), 22 KB (Ali Baba and 40 Thieves), 32 KB (Jungler)
  • RAM: 4 KB (Pac-Man) to 6 KB (Rally-X)
  • Main RAM: 2 KB
  • Video RAM: 2 KB (Pac-Man) to 4 KB (Rally-X)
  • Color depth: 8-bit (256 colors), 9-bit (512 colors), 10-bit (1024 colors)
  • Colors on screen: 16 (Pac-Man), 32 (Pengo), 64 (Rally-X)
  • Graphical planes:
  • Sprite layer: 8 sprites on screen, 64 sprites in memory, 16×16 pixels size, 4 colors per sprite, sprite flipping
  • Tilemap background: 8×8 tiles, 4 colors per tile, scrolling (Rally-X)
  • Radar tilemap (Rally-X)

    • List of Namco Pac-Man arcade games

  • Pac-Man (1980) - the highest-grossing game of all time
  • 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

    Namco Pac-Man Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA