Journey back with us now to the first two years of the eighties, when Pac-Man ruled the coin-op video game roost, where arcade owners' demand for the prized Pac-Man machines was high, where players' skill at winning was increasing and their repeat business was proportionately dwindling, and everyone wanted a piece of that little yellow pie.

In one of the most blatant instances of arcade piracy, no less than three manufacturers procured Pac-Man circuit boards, copied and reprogrammed them, and began marketing altered Pac-Man clones to make a quick buck from beleaguered arcade owners around the world. (It's worth noting that many of these pirate manufacturers were shut down and sued out of existence by Bally/Midway and Namco.)

Puck-Man (Deluxe, 1980) was probably the least altered of the Pac-Clones, changing only a few basic parts of the maze and adding two additional side tunnels, an innovation which was later made official in Ms. Pac-Man.

Hangly Man (Nittoh, 1980) made a few more changes, but not all for the better. It continued to break up the maze structure, introducing three "turnstiles" on either side of the maze, near the side tunnels, which were damn near impossible to navigate around smoothly. In a somewhat more minor change, it changed the monsters' names to - are you ready for this? - Oikake (nicknamed Akabei, the red monster), Machibuse (who retained his original nickname of Pinky), Kimagure (nicknamed Aosuke, the blue monster), and Okoboke (nicknamed Guzuta, the orange monster).

Pirhana (GL, 1980) was easily the most elaborate attempt to completely make-over Pac-Man, but was also the most disastrous of them all. Nothing was left untouched in this clone, which removed all but the outermost maze walls, turned the monsters into squids, turned the power dots into little shells, and transformed Pac-Man himself into a ravenous killer fish. Even the sounds were retooled. But this was not an entirely successful conversion. Your Pirhana has a tendency to disappear while eating dots, and somehow the changing of the maze structure to an open cage would occasionally allow the monsters, er, squids, to pass from one side of the screen to the other as if there was a side tunnel there. It seems as though a top-to-bottom tunnel - shades of Atari 2600 Pac-Man! - was added, at least on the maze, though it did not work.

Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com editor/webmaster

Puck-Man

Hangly Man

Pirhana