Professor Pac-Man
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Professor Pac-Man | |
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Astrocade |
Professor Pac-Man is a
Description
Designed to capitalize on the perceived
Gameplay
The game is for one player or two (in a two-player game, the player who is the first to answer a question correctly receives its points) and consists of answering
Midway had also originally planned to release three different versions of this game: Family (appropriate for all ages, but geared towards younger players), Public (appropriate for general audiences, but geared towards arcades and bars), and Prizes (for casinos).[2]
The game has more than 500 questions and supported the ability to load new questions,[4] but no new questions sets were ever released.[2]
Although most of the questions have nothing to do with Pac-Man, certain questions (asking: "How many left/right turns to the fruit?") show the original Pac-Man maze (with a regular wall in the place of the ghost regenerator) and a line of pellets leading to a fruit in the center, and another question (which first requires the player to study a city scene) asks "Where would you go to play Prof Pac-Man?", while others require the player to fill in the blank lower-right square of a 16-square grid, with four different fruits (or Pac-Men facing different directions) in each row. On the questions which first require the player to study table settings ("Which was the correct sequence?" or "How many plates were (shape)?"), fruits would appear on the plates and Pac-Man would move from right to left as he ate them, if they were answered correctly, and for the questions which first require the player to study the light-up keys on giant telephones of various colors ("Which number was dialed?"), the receiver would come off the telephone and Pac-Man would appear to speak into it (again, if they were answered correctly).
Development
The original idea for Professor Pac-Man came from world champion
The game was written by Rick Frankel, with graphics by Mark Steven Pierce and Sue Forner, and sound and music by Marc Canter.
Legacy
A Professor Pac-Man character appears in the Pac-Man World series. He looks similar to the character depicted in the Professor Pac-Man arcade game, except with the addition of a white mustache and a design closer to the official Pac-Man design. Despite Ms. Pac-Man and other characters being replaced in recent titles, Professor Pac-Man remains intact, implying he lacks any legal issues despite not being originally created by Namco.
References
- ISBN 0375720383.
- ^ ISBN 1789099390.
- ^ Buchanan, Levi (9 March 2009). "Off-Brand Pac-Man". IGN Retro. IGN. Archived from the original on 27 May 2010. Retrieved 2 July 2010.
- ^ "The Rites of Spring". Video Games. Vol. 1, no. 10. July 1983. p. 49.
External links
- Professor Pac-Man at the Killer List of Videogames
- Professor Pac-Man at the Arcade History database