| smbhax [sys=NES; cat=Puzzle; reg=J] |
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From the Steam version of Namco Museum Archives Volume 1 (see entry 1787): I extracted the ROMs from the Steam version using MArchiveBatchTool: https://github.com/farmerbb/RED-Project and played them in Mesen.
These look designed for square pixels; at NTSC screen ratio they are slightly too wide: oval Pac-Man, rectangular Dig Dug dirt, etc.
Pac-Man
Weird looking and sounding but plays surprisingly well. |
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| | | Extracts from the Steam NMAV1 as Pac_Man_jp.NES, which would seem to mean it's the Famicom version.
https://tcrf.net/Pac-Man_(NES,_Famicom_Disk_System)
"Tengen localized the Famicom version for North America"
"The first Tengen release was officially licensed by Nintendo of America. However, when Tengen lost official Nintendo licensing in 1989 due to a legal dispute (more on this in NES Ms. Pac-man, entry 2000) they chose to re-release Pac-Man on their own. Naturally, that means all mention of Nintendo was removed from the game."
"Later in 1993, the game was re-released again in North America, this time by Namco."
"Finally, the game made it over to Europe and Australia, in a version based on the 1993 North American release."
"the Japanese release has two revisions of its own."
"Rev0 of the Japanese release features the "CHRACTER" typo [on the screen listing the ghost names]. This spelling was fixed in Rev1.
The only other change in the ROM for the second Japanese revision is one byte to move a block of data from RAM $0625 to $0620 for some reason. Not certain what it actually does, but it seems to be sound-related."
The extracted version has the Japanese ghost names and spells "CHARACTER" correctly. It also has "©1984 BNEI" which is an interesting retcon ROM edit, given that Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc. wasn't founded until 2006. ; ) |
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| | | 1974 - Hideyuki Nakajima becomes president of Atari Japan
1974 - Namco--Masaya Nakamura president--buys Atari Japan
1978 - Nakajima made president of new US arm, Namco America
1985 - Namco America buys 60% of Atari Games from WB
1987 - Nakamura, frustrated w/ WB & Atari Games, sells 33% to a group of Atari Games employees, led by Nakajima
1987 - Nakajima resigns from Namco America, becomes president of Atari Games, which with no majority shareholder (Namco and WB each own 40%, employees have 20%) is effectively an independent company; Nakamura chairs its board
1987 - December: Nakajima founds Atari Games division Tengen (Tengen is a term from the Japanese board game Go; the name Atari also comes from Go)
1988 - Tengen tells US Copyright Office they need Nintendo's NES lockout chip copyright application, complete with the chip's source code, for a (nonexistent) ongoing legal case; under this false pretense, Tengen obtains the NES lockout chip source code from the Copyright Office
1988 - midyear: Nakamura's chairmanship of Atari Games ends
1988 - October: Tengen publishes Nintendo-licensed NES Pac-Man
1988 - December: Atari Games sues Nintendo for antitrust practices and announce they will release their own Tengen-branded NES carts, without Nintendo license
1989 - Tengen publishes Nintendo-unlicensed NES Pac-Man
1989 - November: Nintendo sues Atari Games for copyright and patent infringement of their NES lockout chip
1990 - Tengen releases Nintendo-unlicensed NES Ms. Pac-Man
1991 - April: District court preliminary injunction enjoins Atari Games from selling more unlicensed games prior to trial
1993 - November: Namco publishes their own (Namco Hometek) NES Pac-Man in the US
1994 - March: WB re-acquires controlling stake in Atari Games, subsequently consolidates its division Tengen into Time-Warner Interactive
1994 - June: Atari Games and Nintendo settle consolidated antitrust & copyright/patent infringement suit "with Atari Games paying Nintendo for damages and use of several intellectual property licenses" (Wikipedia)
1994 - July: Nakajima dies age 64 |
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Playing NES--actually Famicom--Pac-Man, extracted from the Steam version of Namco Museum Archives Volume 1 and running in the emulator Mesen in Windows!
0:00 - Japanese ghost names, Tengen conspiracies 'p'
8:15 - high score run
13:58 - 4th stage speed kick warps sound
20:42 - Galaxian
46:02 - playing a bit more
55:45 - wrap!
The speed kicks up to semi-decent suddenly at stage 4 and also speeds up the sounds, which aren't perfect to start with and get progressively weirder as the speed increases. By stage 7 the speed feels really good although there is some slowdown here and there, and the control is still a bit unreliable, like especially changing direction to up or down especially at least sometimes seemed to require pressing the input longer than you'd think you'd need to. 'p' |
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| | | | There's something about this version though, despite the slow speed of the 1st 3 stages--I really like the extra-large, maze-wall-overlapping character sprites, which coupled with moving the scores and fruit off to the right side are way bigger on-screen than the arcade version; and even the single-color fruits have a certain charm to them. |
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| | | | Okay maybe I've changed my mind a little--there's an excruciating sound that plays when chasing ghosts, and Pac-Man's mouth animation is flashing in a weird way. ; ) |
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