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puckman: MAME ROM Information.

History:

Puckman (c) 1980 Namco.

Puckman is the original Japanese version of "Pac-Man", the seminal and hugely influential arcade game in which the player guides the legendary Pac-Man around a single-screen maze eating dots. Pac-Man is constantly pursued in his task by four colored ghosts. Each ghost has its own unique personality and behavioural patterns and a single touch from any of the ghosts results in Pac-Man losing a life. When all of Pac-Man's lives are lost, the game is over. (The ghosts' names differ between the Japanese and U.S. versions of the game. See the 'Updates' section for complete details on name/nickname combinations.)

Power pills are situated in each corner of the rectangular maze and eating one of these makes Pac-Man temporarily invincible; the four ghosts also change to dark blue in color and can now be eaten by Pac-Man. But watch out...a flashing blue ghost indicates that the power pill is about to wear off and the ghosts are about to transform back to their former selves again. Once Pac-Man eats a blue ghost, this 'skinned' ghost then becomes visible as a pair of eyes only, will return to the ghost pen in the middle of the maze, regenerate into its former self, and return to the maze to continue its pursuit of Pac-Man.

Each maze contains 240 dots and 4 power pills, and all must be eaten to complete the level; whereupon the entire sequence begins again with an increased level of difficulty (the action increases in speed and power pills decrease in effectiveness).

Twice in every level, a bonus fruit or prize item will temporarily appear in the middle of the maze below the ghost pen. Pac-Man can eat these bonus items to receive extra points. Also, there is an escape tunnel on each side of the maze that Pac-Man can use to escape any ghosts that are currently closing in on him. The ghosts can also use the tunnel, but take longer to pass through it than Pac-Man, making escape a little easier.

Between certain rounds, funny intermissions will be played featuring Pac-Man and the ghosts in funny situations. 3 intermissions are present:

1) Blinky, the red ghost, chases Pac-Man across the screen and off the side. Then he re-appears running in the opposite direction, having turned blue, followed by a giant Pac-Man! This intermission is played after Round 2.

2) Blinky is again chasing Pac-Man, but this time he rips his red sheet on a nail on the ground, and we can see his pink body under the sheet! This intermission is played after Round 5.

3) Blinky chases Pac-Man across the screen once more, this time with his sheet sewn. They disappear at the left side and then Blinky reappears coming back the opposite direction. This time he is bare and drags his sheet behind him. This intermission is played after Round 9, 13 and 17.

No intermission is present between rounds after the 18th one.

- TECHNICAL -

The original Namco Puckman Upright model came in a white cabinet that may look familiar to most gamers. This cabinet is the same 'swoopy' design used for "Pac-Man", and "Galaxian". The only actual design difference was the coin door. The Japanese version had a tall coin door with a single coin mech, while the U.S. version, "Pac-Man", had a fat coin door with two coin mechs installed. However, the graphics on the Japanese machine were completely different from those of U.S. machine. The marquee had the 'Puckman' logo off to the side at an angle, and showed a scene with half a dozen cartoon Puckmen eating power pellets, with a few ghosts lingering off to the side. The monitor bezel was largely red and was of a circular design and had many Puckmen lounging around the perimeter of the circle. The control panel continued the reddish graphics and had instructions in Japanese, along with a yellow ball-top 4-Way joystick and Start buttons for each player. The sideart was a large circular sticker that advertised the game's name, and had many cartoon Puckmen in action around the edges of the circle, with the word Namco displayed prominently at the bottom. The cabinet was finished off with yellow t-molding on the edges.

A final bootleg/hack upright model was a complete fake, but there were a lot of them. They seemed to use converted Namco cabinets, painted white, and were decorated with very strange looking sideart that showed Puckmen and ghosts that looked nothing like the ones on any other Puckman/Pac-Man products (since when has Puckman had green frogs legs?). The marquee had an odd Puckman logo in yellow and orange, along with a picture of the blue ghost and the strange 'frog legged' Puckman.

Main CPU : Z80 (@ 3.072 Mhz)

Sound Chips : Namco 3-channel WSG

Screen orientation : Vertical

Video resolution : 224 x 288 pixels

Screen refresh : 60.61 Hz

Palette colors : 16

Players : 2

Control : 4-way joystick

- TRIVIA -

The game was first introduced to the Japanese arcade market in May 1980 and caught the hearts and imaginations of the public like no other game before it, and few since. It is still regarded as the hallmark of the 'golden age' of video games and an icon of 1980's popular culture.

The game was originally known in Japan as Puckman, but due to the West's predilection with changing words to vulgarities by scratching part of the word off (in this case, changing the word 'Puck' to something rather less socially acceptable by scratching off part of the letter 'P'), the name was changed to "Pac-Man" for its release to the U.S. arcade market in October 1980. The name 'Pac-Man' comes from the Japanese slang term 'paku-paku', which describes the motion of the mouth opening and closing during eating and translates to English as 'to eat'.

Toru Iwatani, author and designer of Pac-Man : Pac-Man's character is difficult to explain even to the Japanese -- he is an innocent character. He hasn't been educated to discern between good and evil. He acts more like a small child than a grown-up person. Think of him as a child learning in the course of his daily activities. If someone tells him guns are evil, he would be the type to rush out and eat guns. But he would most probably eat any gun, even the pistols of policemen who need them.

Pac-Man was, quite literally, conceived at lunchtime. Iwatini, then 26, was very hungry and ordered himself a pizza for lunch. He took one slice, and, looking at the rest of the pizza, Pac-Man was born. However, in later years, Iwatani has suggested the shape was based on the Japanese character 'kuchi', meaning mouth. He rounded off this shape, and created the classic shape. The game took 1 1/2 years to complete and had five people on its team. Pac-Man is the greatest selling arcade game of all time and is arguably also the world's most recognized video-game character of all time. It had its own cartoon, lunch box, board game, stickers and hundreds of other products. This was largely due to Pac-Man being the first truly distinctive video-game 'character', and it changed the face of video games forever. Pac-Man was the first video game to be as equally popular to women as it was with men.

* A place in video game history : 'Pac-Man is the most universally known arcade game, ' said Chris Lindsey, director of the National Video Game and Coin-Op Museum in St. Louis. 'Everybody knows about Pac-Man. And, I've noticed, almost everybody can play Pac-Man pretty well. Pac-Man makes just about the best use of the joystick one can imagine. It's so intuitive that it puts other games to shame in terms of how easy it is for a person to walk up, stick a quarter in the machine, and start doing something meaningful. At the time, Pac-Man introduced a completely unique style of game play and was also highly identifiable in terms of its music. With Pac-Man, everything was there. The video game industry needs another game that captures the public's heart like Pac-Man, and so far, no one has been able to come up with it.'

* The great 25-cent escape : 'People expect to see Pac-Man when they come into the museum, and without fail, when they see it, they want to play it,' Lindsey said. 'People remember spending hours and hours at Pac-Man. They like to see how good they are now when they play it. And I would say that, perhaps more than any other game, the same playing skills still apply. Perhaps it's because of the intuitive game play. You don't have to memorize the behavior of a wide array of enemies as you do with some other games. You just have to remember that when the ghosts turn blue, you only have seconds, until they start seriously blinking, to go and get them. And Pac-Man is a little looser in its style of game play - more open. For instance, you can kill time in the lower left hand corner until you see an opening between the ghosts, and you can strategize a bit more: You can play with the tunnels, you can play with the position of the ghosts in relation to the energizers. Even people who haven't played in years remember those strategies.'

After all these years, the challenge of Pac-Man still remains.

'You can also get into some really fun jams, when you've got a ghost on your tail and you have to make a decision about whether you're going to go left, or right, or straight at the next junction, which is in .03 seconds,' Lindsey said. 'It gets to be pretty tense, especially when those ghosts start moving really fast and the energizers aren't lasting as long. Pac-Man can be a real heart-thumping game.'

After the 255th level, Puckman/Pac-Man presents the player with the infamous 'split-screen' level, where the left-half of the screen is normal, but the right-half of the screen is garbled with a mess of letters, numbers, symbols and other graphics. This level cannot be completed because there are not enough dots on screen to be eaten! This is the result of a bug in the routine drawing the fruits at the bottom of the screen, according to the round number. Indeed, the code works as follows:

1) it increases the last round number by one;

2) it checks if the result is smaller than 8 (in this case, you still would not have enough fruits to fill the line and some blank space must be drawn);

3) it checks if the result is larger than 19 (in this case, it has only to draw keys);

4) finally, it fills the bottom bar with the correct fruits.

In particular, if the round number is smaller than 8, the game draws as many fruits as the previous round number. This produces an undesirable effect right after the 255th level.

Indeed, 256 = 255+1 becomes 00 for the CPU (which expects to use the last 2 hexadecimal digits only, and 256 = 100 in hex)!

Therefore, the game thinks to be in one of the first 7 levels (because 0 is smaller than 7), but it tries to draw 255 fruits (because the last round number was 255). Of course, there is no space for that many fruits to be displayed and the game starts to draw garbage on the main screen.

Fixing the original code (either through a cheat in emulation, or hacking the roms on the PCB) would results in a 256th level identical to the first one (cherries will appear) but harder, since ghosts will behave as they do in levels beyond the 19th.

The alien spaceship "Galaxian" makes an appearance as the prize in the 9th and 10th boards.

Note : Excluding bootlegs, there are 23 different name/nickname combinations for the ghosts in Puckman/Pac-Man (27 including 'Sue' from "Ms. Pac-Man", 'Tim' from "Jr. Pac-Man", and 'Funky' and 'Spunky', both from "Pac-Mania").

'Galaxian' boards will run in Pac-Man machines, but the sound pinout is different, so the pinout at the connector would have to be modified. To fire, one would have to press UP on the joystick.

Billy Mitchell, Rick Fothergill, Chris Ayra, Tim Balderramos and Donald Hayes all hold the official record for this game on 'Regular (TGTS)' settings with a perfect score of 3333360 points on July 3, 1999, July 31, 1999, February 16, 2000, December 4, 2004 and July 21, 2005, respectively.

Chris Ayra holds the official record for the fastest time to get a perfect game on 'Regular' settings with 3:42:05 on April 2, 2002.

Ron Corcoran holds the official record for this game on 'Speedup' settings with 1321020 points on May 13, 2001.

Official Releases:

Puckman [Upright model] (Namco)

Puckman [Cocktail model] (Namco)

Licensed products:

Puckman (Zaccaria)

Puckman (Kenphone)

Puckman [Upright model] (NSM)

Puckman [Cocktail model] (NSM)

Puckman [Wall model] (NSM)

Puckman (Bell-Fruit)

Pac-Man [Upright model] [No. 932] (Midway)

Pac-Man [Cocktail model] [No. 933] (Midway)

Pac-Man [Mini-Myte model] [No. 934] (Midway)

Unofficial products:

Pac-Man [Galaxian hardware]

Crock-Man

Ghostmuncher (LAI Games)

New Puck X (Deluxe)

Newpuc1 (Unibox)

Newpuc2 (Kamiya)

Joyman (Monster)

Hangly Man (Nittoh)

Caterpillar (Phi)

Buccaneer (Bucco)

- UPDATES -

The attract mode's title sequence introduces the ghosts with name/nickname combinations displayed on the upper half of the screen that differ between the Japanese and U.S. versions of the game. They are listed as follows in the order of red, pink, cyan, and orange.

In Puckman, the original Japanese version, the ghosts were named Oikake (Akabei), Machibuse (Pinky), Kimagure (Aosuke), and Otoboke (Guzuta).

In the U.S. version of "Pac-Man", the ghosts are named Shadow (Blinky), Speedy (Pinky), Bashful (Inky), and Pokey (Clyde).

Notice that the pink ghost's nickname is unchanged between the U.S. and Japanese versions.

The ghosts' original Japanese names and nicknames translate to English respectively as chaser (red guy), ambusher (pink guy), fickle (blue guy), and stupid (slow guy).

The Japanese version also had a DIP switch for alternate name/nickname combinations for the ghosts : Urchin (Macky), Romp (Micky), Stylist (Mucky), and Crybaby (Mocky).

The 'Tips and Tricks' section below will use the ghosts' U.S. nicknames.

ADDITIONAL NOTES :

In Japan Set 3 :

* At the top of the title screen, instead of 'Nickname', it says 'Ghost'.

* The 'Press Start' screen displays 1981 as the year of release, instead of 1980.

- SCORING -

Dot : 10 points.

Power pill (energizer) : 50 points.

Ghosts : 200, 400, 800, 1600 points.

Cherry : 100 points.

Strawberry : 300 points.

Peach : 500 points.

Apple : 700 points.

Pineapple : 1000 points.

Galaxian : 2000 points.

Bell : 3000 points.

Key : 5000 points.

- TIPS AND TRICKS -

* The number of lives Pac-Man starts with depends on the 'Lives' dip switch setting (1, 2, 3, or 5; the default is 3).

* An extra life is awarded based on the 'Extra Lives' dip switch setting (10000, 15000, 20000, or None; the default is 10000).

* Fruits appear twice on each board. The first fruit appears after Pac-Man has eaten 70 dots; the second fruit appears once there are only 70 dots remaining in the maze.

* At the beginning of a round, the ghosts won't immediately pursue Pac-Man. Use this time the best as you can.

* Pac-Man can turn corners faster than the ghosts can, so turning many corners can help you escape ghosts.

* The tunnel allows Pac-Man and the ghosts to instantly travel from one side of the maze to the other. While traveling through the tunnel, Pac-Man moves at normal speed, but the ghosts' speed is reduced in half. This provides Pac-Man with a good opportunity to put some distance between him and the ghosts, but be careful not to get trapped by another ghost entering the opposite side.

* Stall Pac-Man from entering the tunnel and then, just before the ghosts reach him, send him through the tunnel. By attracting the ghosts to one side of the screen, you reduce Pac-Man's chances of meeting them when he emerges on the other side of the screen.

* If you hold the joystick in a direction that is blocked by a wall, Pac-Man will turn in that direction as soon as he reaches a passage leading in that direction. Remember this to turn corners as fast as you can.

* Remember that eating dots will slow Pac-Man down a little bit: avoid parts of the maze in which you've not been yet if you are trying to escape ghosts!

* Try not to eat power pills until the ghosts are near. The longer Pac-Man waits, the closer the ghosts get, and the easier it is for Pac-Man to eat them once they have turned blue.

* Mind that, as the levels increases, the ghost speed increases as well!

* In later rounds, you're not going to be able to eat ghosts after eating a power pill, because the vulnerability time decreases to zero. This is when you need to learn how to avoid the ghosts understanding their movement and their moving patterns!

* Right above the ghost pen, there are two paths leading upward to the upper part of the maze. The ghosts never travel upward through these holes while they're in their normal forms; they only do while they're blue after Pac-Man has eaten a power pill! Indeed, they only exit the area around the ghost pen from the sides or the bottom. These are not completely safe corners, since ghosts can travel downward through them, anyway they often represents a safe passage to flee from ghosts pursuing you around the ghost pen.

* Ghosts' Movements : First of all, remember that ghosts are not always following you! Their movements follow two distinct phases: one in which they avoid Pac-Man and one in which they hunt him down. In the former phase, each ghost patrols his personal corner of the maze. In the latter one, they will try to find Pac-Man, following their personal 'behavior'. Namely :

1) Blinky (red ghost) : he tends to patrol the top-right corner of the maze and he follows Pac-Man always trying to minimize their respective distance.

2) Pinky (pink ghost) : he tends to patrol the top-left corner of the maze and he follows Pac-Man trying to reach a position slightly in front of Pac-Man, in the direction he's moving.

3) Inky (cyan ghost) : he tends to patrol the bottom-right corner of the maze and he has the most complicated AI since he moves towards a point determined by both Pac-Man's position and Blinky's position.

4) Clyde (orange ghost) : he tends to patrol the bottom-left corner of the maze and he only tries to be close to Pac-Man, without hunting him directly.

Ghosts alternate these two different behaviors (hiding and hunting) a few times in each round, then they start to pursue Pac-Man restlessly until all the dots are eaten, or they manage to catch him.

Additionally, as soon as a certain number of dots has been cleared from the maze (this number decreases as the levels pass), Blinky's speed will increase and he won't stop to search for Pac-Man anymore.

- SERIES -

1. Puckman / Pac-Man (1980)

2. Ms. Pac-Man (1981)

3. Super Pac-Man (1982)

4. Pac-Man Plus (1982)

5. Jr. Pac-Man (1983)

6. Pac & Pal (1983)

7. Pac-Land (1984)

8. Pac-Mania (1987)

9. Pac-In-Time (1994, Nintendo Super Famicom)

10. Pac-Man 2 - The New Adventures (1994, Nintendo Super Famicom and Sega Mega Drive)

11. Pac-Man VR (1996)

12. Pac-Man World (1999, Sony PlayStation)

13. Pac-Man - Adventures in Time (2000, PC CD-ROM)

14. Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness (2000, Sony PlayStation)

15. Ms. Pac-Man - Quest for the Golden Maze (2001, PC CD-ROM)

16. Pac-Man All-Stars (2002, PC CD-ROM)

17. Pac-Man Fever (2002, Sony PlayStation 2)

18. Pac-Man World 2 (2002, Sony PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, and Microsoft XBOX; 2004, PC CD-ROM)

19. Pac-Man vs. (2003, Nintendo GameCube)

20. Ms. Pac-Man - Maze Madness (2004, Nintendo GameBoy Advance)

21. Pac-Man World 3 (2005, Sony PSP, Sony PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, Microsoft XBOX, PC CD-ROM, and Nintendo DS)

22. Pac'n Roll (2005, Nintendo DS)

23. Pac-Pix (2005, Nintendo DS)

24. Pac-Man Championship Edition (2007, Xbox Live)

25. Pac-Man Championship Edition DX (2010, Xbox Live & PSN)

26. Pac-Man Battle Royale (2010)

- STAFF -

Designed by : Toru Iwatani

Programmed by : Hideyuki Mokajima

Music & Sound by : Toshio Kai

- PORTS -

* Consoles :

Bally Astrocade ("Muncher")

Atari 2600 (1981)

Atari 5200 (1982)

Colecovision (1983)

Mattel Intellivision (1983)

Emerson Arcadia ("Gobbler")

Atari XEGS

Nintendo Famicom (1987)

Nintendo Famicom Disk (1990)

Sega Game Gear (1990)

SNK Neo-Geo Pocket (1990)

Nintendo Game Boy (1991)

Sony PlayStation (1995, "Namco Museum Vol.1")

Nintendo Game Boy Color (1999, "Pac-Man - Special Color Edition")

Nintendo 64 (1999, "Namco Museum 64")

Sega Dreamcast (1999, "Namco Museum")

Nintendo Game Boy Advance (2001, "Pac-Man Collection")

Sony PlayStation 2 (2001, "Namco Museum")

Nintendo GameCube (2002, "Namco Museum")

Microsoft XBOX (2002, "Namco Museum")

Nintendo Game Boy Advance (2004, Famicom Mini Series)

Sony PlayStation 2 (2005, "Namco Museum 50th Anniversary")

Microsoft XBOX (2005, "Namco Museum 50th Anniversary")

Nintendo GameCube (2005, "Namco Museum 50th Anniversary")

Nintendo Game Boy Advance (2005, "Namco Museum 50th Anniversary")

Sony PSP (2005, "Namco Museum Battle Collection") : a brand new 'Arrangement' version unique to this port is also featured.

Microsoft XBOX 360 (2006, as a downloadable Live Arcade game)

Microsoft XBOX 360 (2007, "Pac-Man Championship Edition" Xbox Live Arcade)

Nintendo DS (2007, "Namco Museum DS")

Microsoft XBOX 360 (2008, "Namco Museum Virtual Arcade") : as an Xbox Live Arcade Game

Sony PlayStation 3 (2009, "Namco Museum Essentials")

Nintendo Wii (2010, "Namco Museum Megamix")

* Computers :

Exidy Sorcerer (1981, "Chomp")

Tandy Color Computer (1981, "Pac-Tac")

Tandy Color Computer (1982, "Ghost Gobbler")

Tandy Color Computer (1982, "Pack Maze")

Atari 400 (1982)

Atari 800 (1982)

PC [Booter] (1982, "PC-Man)

Commodore VIC-20 (1982)

BBC B (1982, Acornsoft): Renamed "Snapper" after Acornsoft was sued.

Commodore C64 (1983)

Tandy Color Computer (1983, "Pac-Tac II")

Tandy Color Computer (1983, "Pac Jaws")

PC [Booter] (1983)

PC [Booter] (1983, "Ascii Man", a part of the "Friendlyware PC Arcade" suite)

PC [MS-DOS] (1983)

Texas Instruments TI-99/4A (1983)

Fujitsu FM-7 (1984)

Acorn Electron (1984, "Snapper")

MSX (1984)

Amstrad CPC (1985)

Thomson TO8 (1986, "Compilation Contacthoms")

Atari ST (1986, "Spook - Mighty Munchers")

Tandy Color Computer (1990, "Pac-Dude")

Apple Macintosh (1992, "Mac-Man")

PC [MS Windows 95] (1995, "Mac-Man", part of "Windows Arcade Pack")

PC [MS Windows 95, 3.5''](1995, "Microsoft Return of Arcade")

Tandy Color Computer 3 (1997)

PC [MS-DOS] (1997, "ChampPac-Em" - CHAMProgramming)

PC [MS Windows, CD-ROM] (2000, "Microsoft Return of Arcade 20th Anniversary")

PC [MS Windows, CD-ROM] (2005, "Namco Museum 50th Anniversary")

Sinclair ZX Spectrum

Apple II

Sharp X68000

PC9801 ("Wiz")

* Others :

VFD portable game (1980, "Pac-Man 2", called Pac Man 2 because it allowed two people to play at once) by Entex.

VFD portable game (1980, "Hungry Pac", Japanese release only) by Entex.

VFD handheld game (1981) by Coleco.

LCD flip-type handheld game (1984) by Tiger (Released overseas by Orlitronic).

LCD large screen handheld game (1984) by Tiger (Released overseas by Orlitronic).

LCD handheld game (1992) released by MGA (Micro Games of America).

Arcade (1996, "Namco Classics Collection Vol.2")

LCD handheld color game (1999) released by MGA (Micro Games of America).

Mobile Phones (2003)

Namco Classics TV game (2003 - Jakks Pacific).

Super Pac-Man TV game (2006 - Jakks Pacific).

Apple I Pod (2006)

Arcade Gold featuring Pac-Man (2007 - Jakks Pacific).

Retro Arcade featuring Pac-Man (2008 - Jakks Pacific).

- SOURCES -

Game's rom.

Machine's picture.

Pac-Man Help file from Microsoft Return of Arcade.

All In Color For a Quarter - Keith Smith

Mark Longridge, Scott Lawrence and Don Hodges webpages, for the analysis of the 256th level bug.

MAME Info:

MAMEINFO.DAT v0.146

Report Bugs at the MAME Testers Forum:

http://mametesters.org/view_all_set.php?sort=last_updated&dir=DESC&type=2

If you want to know more about MAME, then read the MAME Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page at:

http://mamedev.org/devwiki/index.php/Frequently_Asked_Questions

The newest Mameinfo.dat, Mameinfo-Source and more can you find at:

http://www.mameworld.info/mameinfo/

0.35b9 [?]

0.02 [Nicola Salmoria]

0.01 [Nicola Salmoria, Allard van der Bas]

Artwork available

Bugs:

- pacman, pacmanm: Joystick input when changing direction seems different to original board. mojo (ID 03145)

- pacmanbl: Sprites are cut off on the top row. Robbbert (ID 01598)

- piranhah: Unable to enter through top escape tunnel. kellyzz64 (ID 04676)

WIP:

- 0.144u1: Team Europe, Nico and Thorsten K. added clone Crock-Man.

- 17th November 2011: Team Europe - Thanks to the help of Nico, Thorsten K. and Team Europe we got CROCK-MAN from Rene Pierre. Ofcourse it's another Puckman/Pac-Man hack...but we also got the original marquee and the manual (GERMAN, FRENCH and ENGLISH) for it and that makes it now completely digitaly preserved!

- 0.140u2: Gerald (COY), Smitdogg and The Dumping Union added clone Buccaneer (hack 19??).

- 9th November 2010: Smitdogg - I found this board labeled as Buccaneer for cheap and picked it up, wasn't really sure what it would be. It turns out it's a Pac-Man hack. It's in Misfit already (some version that used different sized roms) but now it's proven to have been sold to arcades instead of a recentish hack so it can be added to the official. I think the bootleggers started with a copy of the Pac-Man (Hearts) bootleg and then went crazy on it.

- 0.135u1: Team Japump added clone Popeye-Man (hack 1981).

- 0.134u3: Fixed rom names in clone Pac-Man (Galaxian hardware, set 1/2).

- 0.134u2: Team Europe added clone Pac-Man (Galaxian hardware, set 2). Changed description of clone 'Pac-Man (Galaxian hardware)' to 'Pac-Man (Galaxian hardware, set 1)'.

- 0.131u1: Changed description to 'PuckMan (Japan set 1)'.

- 9th July 2008: Mr. Do - Added the JPN cocktail instructions for Puckman, courtesy of arcadegeezer, and the EURO cocktail instructions, courtesy of Tormod. "Fixed" the Midway and Bally logo text on the Pac-Man cocktail to look more correct, and matched the colors to those of the upright. Note that this still needs to be done right. The source of this cocktail artwork was actually the marquee, not the real cocktail artwork (which is slightly different).

- 0.122u8: Changed description of clone 'Newpuc2' to 'Newpuc2 (set 1)'.

- 21st December 2007: Guru - A huge box arrived today. That 19.75kg box looks mighty impressive, although I'm not sure that all of it is going to be useful. Some could be alt. versions but most don't work so I'll need to dump all of these before I can tell exactly what they are. It contains Pacman PCB with Two Bit Score's 'Super ABC' upgrade kit (on original Midway PCB) and others. Thanks to Tingoes for sending these out.

- 24th June 2007: Mr. Do - Zorg did an outstanding vector job on a bootleg of Puckman. This one is pretty close to the original, but we still really, REALLY want the real thing. This will now be "view_2" in the file.

- 11th March 2007: Mr. Do - Lots of changes to the Puckman (Pac-Man file). First, the upright bezel was redone, based on an original scan on loan from Vintage Arcade Superstore, and vectored by Jcroach. From the same two, we also have the cabaret version of the bezel. On the cocktail artwork, I made the black actually black instead of gray; I also added a white backdrop to the cocktail artwork so that you can still tell the shape of it. If you don't like it, you can turn off backdrops for that game. I also changed the default bezel to Pac-Man, since the included Puckman bezel isn't the original Namco version, and the majority of the clones are versions of Pac-Man anyway.

- 0.111u3: Nathan Woods and Aaron Giles updated input port tokenization for MESS. Added support in MAME for "configuration" switches which are separate from dipswitches. These can be used to configure aspects of the game that don't correspond to dipswitches. Modified Pacman driver to use configurations to control the speedup options.

- 24th August 2006: Mr. Do - Added Pacman cocktail artwork.

- 12th August 2006: Mr. Do - I learned a few more new tricks in the artwork system. Most notably how to crop the viewing area without touching the artwork, and using multiple views for one game. If you notice below, I've changed the table (again), and some games show view_2 or more. With the new system, we are no longer limited to one piece of art per game, or one view with that piece of art. For examples, check out Puckman (two pieces of art; either one is available for both the parent and all clones). For the games that have multiple views, you can choose which one to use from the Video Options selection in the [TAB] menu. This works for both MAME and MAME32, and settings are saved in the gamename.cfg file.

- 9th August 2006: Mr. Do - Thanks to Trigg, I realized that one game can have more than one view, including more than one type of artwork in the file. (Well, Aaron explained it, but I guess it went woosh over my head the first time). This will be good for a great deal of games. First one will be Puckman (puckman and pacman combined in the same file, so you can choose which bezel you want for the different clone games).

- 0.105u2: David Widel added clone Abscam.

- 0.92: smf added clone Puckman (Falcom?).

- 0.90u4: Dave Widel added clone 'Caterpillar Pacman Hack' (1982). I consider this sig. since it came in it's own cab and they did change some of the music. Changed parent description to 'PuckMan (Japan set 1, Probably Bootleg)' and clone '(harder?)' to '(Japan set 3)'. Changed region gfx2 to gfx1 ($1000).

- 0.88: Derrick Renaud changed watchdog to proper time using new MDRV_WATCHDOG_VBLANK_INIT function in Pac-Man.

- 0.84u6: Aaron Giles added clones PuckMan (Japan set 1 with speedup hack) and Pac-Man (Midway, with speedup hack). Removed existing speedup cheat hack from Pacman/Ms Pac Man as the way it was implemented in MAME is NOT how it was implemented in the arcades. I have added the hacked software ROMs as three separate sets for Puck Man, Pac Man, and Ms. Pac Man. These hacked ROMs do not let you control the speed of the game with a button; the game is always fast, and Pac Man is faster than the ghosts. Also added a fake dipswitch to control the equivalent of the hardware version of the speedup hack. It can be set to "Disabled", "Enabled Always", or "Enabled with Button". Note that this hack speeds up everyone, including the ghosts, as the original hack did.

- 0.74: Added clone Hangly-Man (set 3).

- 7th September 2003: Manuel Abadia added another clone of Hangly-Man to the Pacman driver.

- 0.69: Dave Widel added clones Newpuc2 (hack 1980) and Newpuc2 (set 2). This hack was common in the arcades, it has intermissions between each maze and a slot machine every 3 mazes.

- 0.68: Dave Widel added clones Piranha (GL (US Billiards License)) and Piranha (older). Renamed (piranha) to (piranhah).

- 0.65: Added clone Joyman (hack).

- 0.63: Changed description of clone 'Pac-Man (bootleg on Galaxian hardware)' to 'Pac-Man (Galaxian hardware)'.

- 20th June 2002: David Haywood resubmitted a Pac-Man bootleg.

- 19th June 2002: Dave Widel added two new versions of Piranha to the Pac-Man driver.

- 26th February 2002: Mike Coates added another bootleg of Pac-Man Hearts to the Pac-Man driver. Stephane Humbert fixed the dipswitch settings in it.

- 0.53: Renamed (pacman) to (puckman), (pacmanjp) to (puckmana), (pacmanm) to (pacman), (npacmod) to (puckmod) and (puckman) to (newpuckx).

- 0.36b14: Changed description of clone 'Pac-Man (bootleg on Pisces hardware)' to 'Pac-Man (bootleg on Galaxian hardware)'.

- 0.35b13: Gerald Vanderick added clone Hangly-Man (set 2). Changed description of 'Pac Man (set 1)' to 'PuckMan (Japan set 1)' and clones 'Pac Man (set 2)' to 'PuckMan (Japan set 2)', 'Pac Man (Midway)' to 'Pac-Man (Midway)', 'Pac Man (Midway, harder)' to 'Pac-Man (Midway, harder)', 'Pac Man (Hearts)' to 'Pac-Man (Hearts)', 'Pac Man (harder?)' to 'PuckMan (harder?)', 'Hangly Man' to 'Hangly-Man (set 1)', 'Puck Man' to 'New Puck-X', 'Pac Man Plus' to 'Pac-Man Plus', 'Ms. Pac Man' to 'Ms. Pac-Man', 'Miss Pac Plus' to 'Ms. Pac-Man Plus' and 'Pac Gal' to 'Pac-Gal'.

- 4th May 1999: Gerald Vanderick added another Pac Man clone, and an Arabian clone.

- 0.35b9: Allard van der Bas added clone Pac Man (harder?). Victor Trucco added clone Pac Man (set 2). Changed clone 'Pac Man (Namco)' to parent 'Pac Man (set 1)' and clone '(harder)' to '(Midway, harder)'. Removed Pac Man (Namco, alternate). Renamed (pacman) to (pacmanm) and (namcopac) to (pacman).

- 15th March 1999: Victor Trucco added a Pacman clone.

- 12th March 1999: Allard van der Bas added a new Pacman clone to the Pacman driver.

- 0.35b1: Added clone Pac Man (Hearts) (hack 1981) [a zillion people].

- 0.35: Changed description of clone 'Pac Man (bootleg on Pisces hardware)' to 'Pac-Man (bootleg on Pisces hardware)'.

- 0.34b4: Changed description of clone 'Pac Man (bootleg on Galaxian hardware)' to 'Pac Man (bootleg on Pisces hardware)'.

- 0.34b1: Added sound and color proms ($0, 10).

- 0.33b7: Changed description of clone 'Pac Man (modified)' to 'Pac Man (harder)'.

- 0.30: Nicola Salmoria and Aaron Giles completely rewritten the Namco waveform audio subsystem. This gets rid of some artefacts in Pac Man (eating a ghost) and Ms Pac Man (eating dots while a fruit is bouncing). Valerio Verrando added high score saving to clone Pac Man (bootleg on Galaxian hardware).

- 0.29: Nicola Salmoria added clone Pac Man (bootleg on Galaxian hardware). In some games (e.g. Pacman, Galaxian, Rally X) the NumLock and CapsLock leds emulate the 1 Player/2 Players start lamps [Sean Gugler].

- 0.28: New command line option: "-cheat". Cheats like the speedup in Pac Man or the level skip in many other games are disabled by default. Use this switch to turn them on [Nicola Salmoria]. Merged Pengo and Pac Man vidhrdw [Nicola Salmoria]. The speedup cheat in Pac Man can now be permanently set to ON from the dipswitch settings menu.

- 0.27: Nicola Salmoria added clone Pac Man (Namco, alternate).

- 0.26a: Mirko Buffoni worked with the wrong source, now everything is back to normality in Pacman.

- 0.26: Mauro Minenna introduced a new option (-dir4) that simplify the use of the joysticks to be connected on the keyboard. This modify resolves the problem of diagonal direction in games such as PacMan, Popeye, and Kung Fu Master.

- 0.18: Sprite placement in Pac Man should now be arcade perfect [Nicola Salmoria]. Thanks to Richard Davies who verified it on a real machine.

- 0.15: Brad Oliver deserves a prize for being the person who, alone, has discovered more bugs than everyone else put together. This time the bug was illegal memory acesses in games using 224x288 and 288x224 modes (Pengo, Pac Man, Rally X). Nicola Salmoria added high score saving to Pac Man.

- 0.10: Thanks to Valerio Verrando, now -noscanlines works on Pac Man and the other games using a 224x288 screen. If you have problems with the default video mode try this one, it will hopefully solve them.

- 0.06: Fixed staccato notes in Pacman and other games using the same hardware. There are still some minor glitches (especially in Ms. Pac Man) but Pac Man tunes are now very close to the original.

- 0.02: New clones supported: Pac Man (modified), Pac Man (Namco), Hangly Man, Puck Man and Piranha.

- 0.01: Nicola Salmoria added Pac Man (Midway) (Midway 1980). Game is playable with accurate colors and sound. Control: Arrows = Move around, F1 = Skip level, F2 = Test mode and CTRL = Speed up cheat. Known issues: Blinky and Pinky seem to be shifted one pixel to the right. This is really annoying, but I can't seem to be able to understand why. Maybe there is an additional "sprite offset" register somewhere? Or did the original just behave this way? Note that we can't fix it by just moving sprites 0 and 1 one pixel to the left, because when Pac Man eats a power pill the sprites order is changed so that Pac Man is drawn over the ghosts. It becomes sprite 0, and Blinky becomes sprite 4.

LEVELS: 255 (game crashes after 255th level)

Other Emulators:

* CottAGE

* FB Alpha

* GalEMU

* HiVE

* JAE

* JEmu

* JEmu2

* Mimic

* Raine

* Retrocade

* Sparcade

* Tickle

* VAntAGE

Recommended Games (Maze Pac-Man):

Pac-Man / PuckMan

Namco Classic Collection Vol.2 (Pac-Man)

Pac-Man - 25th Anniversary Edition

Pac-Man Plus

Super Pac-Man

Pac & Pal

Pac-Mania

4 Fun in 1 (Ghost Muncher)

unknown Pac-Man gambling game

Ghostmuncher Galaxian (bootleg)

Ms. Pac-Man

Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga - 20th Anniversary Class of 1981 Reunion

Pac-Man - 25th Anniversary Edition (Ms. Pac-Man)

Jr. Pac-Man

Hyper Pacman

XESS - The New Revolution (Hyper Pacman)

Twinkle

Funny Strip

Puckman Pockimon

-

Professor PacMan

Pac-Land

Pac-Land (United Amusements PC Engine)

Puzzle Club

Pac-Slot

Romset: 25 kb / 10 files / 13.4 zip

MAME XML Output:

<description>PuckMan (Japan set 1)</description>

<manufacturer>Namco</manufacturer>

</input>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</game>

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