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dailypacman.bsky.social
Daily Pac-Man
@dailypacman.bsky.social
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Daily facts, news, trivia, and other enlightening tidbits about Pac-Man! Owned and run by @RyanSilberman.bsky.social. Not affiliated with Bandai Namco.

Pac-Village discord server: discord.gg/zzEmRts
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In Mortal Kombat, Pac-Man and a ghost can be seen as part of the markings above a doorway when fighting in the Palace Gates stage.
November 28, 2025 at 3:19 PM
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PacVenture: Pac's Oddysee is a freeware PC game created by Ezequiel Cabrera in 2000.

The title utilizes colorful pre-rendered 3D graphics and a fixed isometric view for its maze gameplay, topped with humerous sounds and the premise of rescuing Ms. Pac from the evil Ghost King.
November 27, 2025 at 4:14 PM
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On August 12, 2019 the official Pac-Man Twitter account posted a picture of a woman named Samantha replacing Pinky in the lineup of ghosts.

It has never been specified who Samantha is, and she has yet to appear again.
November 26, 2025 at 4:15 PM
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Within the early years of Game Maker's lifespan, one of the example games budding developers could play around with was a Pac-Man clone.

The red Pac-Man featured in the game would go on to be a symbol for the program's "Sprites" function in revisions prior to Game Maker Studio.
November 25, 2025 at 4:45 PM
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With recent controversies regarding Ms. Pac-Man and its place in the Pac-Man franchise, one may wonder where they can find the video game this day and age.

For the sake of discussion, I decided to write about most of the Ms. Pac-Man releases you can still officially purchase.
Where can I buy Ms. Pac-Man today? Consoles / PC Although the game's presence isn't as pronounced as it once was, Ms. Pac-Man is still available as a standalone title on Playstation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC via Steam. This version of the game is part of Bandai Namco's Arcade Game Series label. There are currently no options for Switch owners, but if you have a Wii U, you have until March 27th, 2023 to obtain Namco Museum or Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures from the Virtual Console service. Namco Museum is the version for Game Boy Advance containing five games: Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, Galaxian, Pole Position, and Dig Dug. Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures is the SNES verison, which contains Ms. Pac-Man as an unlockable game. Ms. Pac-Man is also accessible via this password - MSPCMND Retail Novelties Ms. Pac-Man has been licensed out to a number of toy companies and the like for retail stores, and they should remain easily available to get a hold of. Brands such as MyArcade, TinyArcade, and Basic Fun have all released a variation of the Ms. Pac-Man game as a standalone handheld product. That said, not all of them are directly based on the original arcade game. Certain releases have used the NES version by Now Production, and Basic Fun initially released an LCD take on Ms. Pac-Man before eventually creating a new product that is more faithful to the arcade original. Home Arcade For those willing to go for the extra mile for their Ms. Pac-Man experience, you can always count on Arcade1Up to keep the game's name alive. During the past few years, they have consistently been releasing home machines featuring the game, with the most recent machine containing Wi-Fi support for online score competitions. Bandai Namco themselves also continue to offer Ms. Pac-Man via the "home" Pac-Man's Pixel Bash machines. While this collection has over 30 games regardless of what variation you play, Ms. Pac-Man is only available as part of these home editions. Pac-Man's Pixel Bash is available in standard and cocktail forms, with a variation of the former including a built-in fridge.
November 24, 2025 at 6:14 PM
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Believe it or not, Pac-Man World 2 was once planned to give Pac-Man the ability to punch enemies!

There exist animations in the game data for punching while standing still and punching while moving. It even partially functions when hacked back in.

(Capture by @McKiddy_SR)
November 23, 2025 at 4:33 PM
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In 2012, Namco Museum DS and the DS version of Pac-Man World 3 were re-released together in a bundle for $19.99.

This boxart comes from a slip that the games' cases were bundled in.
November 22, 2025 at 6:23 PM
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Pac-Man Pinball 2 has a total of three tables for players to gather high scores on. However, two of them must be unlocked

To unlock "Ghost Table" the player must score 20,000,000 points on "Pac-Man Table"

To unlock "Bonus Table" the player must score 30,000,000 on "Ghost Table"
November 21, 2025 at 5:27 PM
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Pac-Man Adventures in Time was once intended to have spoken dialogue in its intro cutscene.

At this point in development, the premise was not quite finalized; in this script, Professor Pac tells Pac-Man to seek the "Magical Power Pills" or Pac-World will cease to exist.
Prof. Pac-Man Script Prof. (fussing and calculating) "No, no, no, this just won't do. Oh dear, no, this won't do at all..." Pac: "Professor?" Prof.: "According to my calculations, there is less time than I thought. Unless we find the missing Magical Power Pills soon, Pac-World will cease to exist. We have to find out where our old foes the ghosts have hidden them.... And fast" Pac: "Any ideas?" Prof.: "I already know they used a prototype of my time machine to hide them in the past, and I have a good idea of the time zones... what I don't know is the exact location of the Pills. It's down to you 'Pac-Man! You must travel back through history to locate and retrieve those Magical Pills". Pac: " Leave it to me, Professor" Prof.: "Splendid! Use the active Time-Portals to reach the Pills, and I will work on the co-ordinates for the other zones... This is not going to be easy, you know how cunning those ghosts are, so be careful and good luck!"
November 20, 2025 at 4:00 PM
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Before pacman.com was ever operated by Namco, the site was used by a company named Two Bit Score Amusements to sell parts or repairs for Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man machines

They also sold modified versions of the games such as "Pac-Man After Dark" and "Ms. Pac Attack"
Pac-Man After Dark Ms. Pac Attack
November 19, 2025 at 4:00 PM
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In a 2011 interview with Game Developer magazine, Toru Iwatani expressed concerns for the industry as the mobile market was getting flooded with games that are "easy to design and to pump out by the dozen."
"The reason I want to emphasize this is that starting last year or so, you've had this flood of very simple games on the iPhone and social networks and so forth. They're very 'easy' games, and by easy I mean easy to design and to pump out by the dozen. I think more thought needs to go toward how games present themselves to the user, to how they can be made more fun. Making games with this well-thought-out approach to design will help them become loved and fondly remembered for a longer time. When you look at games coming out today, it's doubtful that any of us will be talking about them in ten years' time. We have to focus on making games that people will remember a decade from now, or else we'll lose our audience, probably." -Toru Iwatani
November 18, 2025 at 5:26 PM
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Namco Legendary Pack (Atari 50) review - Part 10/10
I guess to summarize, my major criticism with the DLC is that I know there’s more ground that Atari and Digital Eclipse could have covered, at least if they were given the go-ahead. I may not know exactly how these sorts of negotiations go down, but I can gather that they didn’t purposefully shy away from material like Ms. Pac-Man on their own accord. They only could have been told “No.” Despite those shortcomings, there is a lot to like about the Namco Legendary expansion. It may be somewhat shorter in scope than the previous DLCs before it, but you can never go wrong with some of gaming’s greatest hits wrapped up in a bow - not to mention the selection of contextual extras to sweeten the deal - at the price of a singular Arcade Archives entry. Even if the old console ports aren’t 1:1 the arcade originals, they pack a lot of the same action and are worth checking out for the historical novelty. And under Atari 50, you will very much enjoy that novelty.
November 17, 2025 at 5:03 PM
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Namco Legendary Pack (Atari 50) review - Part 9/10
And it isn’t like the folks that made up GCC (General Computer Corporation) wouldn’t play ball; a solid batch of their work is represented in Atari 50, including, in this very DLC, the conversions of Dig Dug, Galaga, and Galaxian that they made for Atari’s home consoles. This would’ve been the perfect opportunity to dig into GCC’s origins and for the interviews to discuss how they came to be a trusted Atari partner - and in turn, got to develop Ms. Pac-Man. Instead, we are left with this opportunity unfulfilled because of arbitrary legal jargon that could have always been rendered a non-issue if the powers that be at Bamco decided to actually do anything about it. Ms. Pac-Man isn’t the only notable Namco title to be MIA, though; Pole Position has been strangely missing from re-releases for just about as long a time. With Atari having distributed both arcade and console versions of it back in the day, one can reasonably think this would have been a great way to re-introduce the game.
November 17, 2025 at 5:02 PM
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Namco Legendary Pack (Atari 50) review - Part 8/10
By now, we’re used to seeing character swaps in Pac-Man games and media that should’ve featured her somewhere. As offensive as Pac-Mom’s character design is, that stuff is small potatoes and easy to shrug off. However, I would argue Atari 50 is the worst exclusion of Ms. Pac-Man to date. Whether Bandai Namco like it or not, Ms. Pac-Man was a crucial part of not only Namco’s and Atari’s history, but also video game history as a whole. So for an interactive documentary to recap a slice of video game history involving Atari and Namco and not be able to go over the story of Ms. Pac-Man is depressing.
November 17, 2025 at 5:02 PM
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Namco Legendary Pack (Atari 50) review - Part 7/10
I did find it rather odd that there is a video in here where Tod Fyre talks about working on a version of Xevious for the 2600 that was never released. It’s a cool interview, but you don’t get to play the prototype that’s shown off in the footage. This modern incarnation of Atari aren’t typically shy of allowing people to check out unreleased titles and homebrews, so I don’t know what happened. At that, it would’ve been nice to play the new Atari 7800 version of Pac-Man here, though I guess its absence is so sales of the actual cartridge and the Atari 2600+ wouldn’t get cannibalized. Now let’s talk about the lack of Ms. Pac-Man.
November 17, 2025 at 5:01 PM
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Namco Legendary Pack (Atari 50) review - Part 6/10
The arcade versions of Dig Dug and Xevious included have DIP switch settings you can play around with, and the home console games have Save and Load options for you to resume a session at any given moment. Full scans of the manuals and boxes are included with every console game, and some of the other materials feature old advertisements, a Xevious design document, flyers, and uncropped versions of the illustrations that were used for the manuals and promotionals.
November 17, 2025 at 5:01 PM
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Namco Legendary Pack (Atari 50) review - Part 5/10
Alongside those Pac-Mans, you have Namco’s troupe of other long-renowned classics, Dig Dug, Xevious, Galaga, and Galaxian. Again, this wouldn’t be the first time these games get released, and it won’t be the last. There’s a reason why they keep re-releasing these, however: People still love them, because they are great games and fun to play even today. You don’t exactly get that kind of transcendental testimony from titles like Combat or Atari Video Cube. In Atari 50, they all play as well as you would hope, and are presented with the slick, soulful flair that permeates the rest of the compilation.
November 17, 2025 at 5:01 PM
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Namco Legendary Pack (Atari 50) review - Part 4/10
You don’t just get to play the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man; you get to read all about how hard Atari marketed the thing, view the artworks that shaped up its visual identity on the packaging, and listen to Tod Frye rationalize how he approached making the game. Sure, you can still point and laugh at Pac-Man 2600 if you want, but now you have all this added context at your disposal to at least get an understanding of what everyone involved was thinking at the time. And if you want an authentic Pac-Man experience, you’ll be happy to know the Atari 5200 and Atari 8-Bit computer versions are included in the DLC as well.
November 17, 2025 at 5:00 PM
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Namco Legendary Pack (Atari 50) review - Part 3/10
For the most part, the Namco Legendary Pack continues what the base Atari 50 established. There is no surprise in the re-release of five classic Namco games per se. That’s just one step below the usual Namco Museum entry. But this isn’t a Namco Museum; it’s Atari 50. Therefore, the DLC paints a story of how Namco springboarded off of Atari’s short-lived push for the Japanese market and proceeded to make bank in the video game business, resulting in a mutual relationship between the two parties.
November 17, 2025 at 5:00 PM
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Namco Legendary Pack (Atari 50) review - Part 2/10
Not only does it come jam-packed with a library’s worth of Atari games (including unique spin-offs Digital Eclipse created specifically for it), but you also have this treasure trove of supplemental materials, period pieces, documents, and more complementing the presence of these playable relics in every era. I’ve poured hours into just looking at the wonderful illustrations and watching interviews of former Atari developers reminiscing about their time with the company and the games they worked on. It’s easy to lose yourself in all those extras, and that’s what makes the Atari 50 experience so much greater than the usual drop of old games on a current-gen platform. Even if you aren’t going to find yourself playing many of the games themselves for long, you may nevertheless be convinced by Atari 50 to at least gain an appreciation for them and respect the artistry that went into their creations. This is an earnest love letter to the yesteryears of video gaming.
November 17, 2025 at 4:59 PM
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Namco Legendary Pack (Atari 50) review - Part 1/10
To be perfectly honest, while there is an actual review to read here, this write-up is pretty much an excuse for me to shill Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration on Daily Pac-Man. If you have even an ounce of respect or curiosity for classic video games and the history behind them, you absolutely owe it to yourself to grab a copy of this compilation. Atari 50 is as good as retro collections get, encompassing the entire brand’s past from the glory days in the arcades to its twilight hours supporting the Jaguar.
November 17, 2025 at 4:59 PM
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Welcome back to Pac-itorial, a series of threads where I review Pac-Man games!

Today, we'll be digging into a portion of Atari's (and Namco's) past with the Namco Legendary Pack DLC released for Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration.

Follow along for the Pac-itorial! 🧵
November 17, 2025 at 4:58 PM
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Defeating bosses fast enough to clear gold time trials in Pac-Man World 2: Re-Pac can certainly be a challenge due to their choreographed sequences, but there are subtleties that make it possible.

For examples, here are some tips to help you make quick work of Clyde and Inky!
CLYDE'S KILLER FROG Normally, the game makes it known to you to attack Clyde when the frog's tongue is paralyzed for a brief period of time. However this doesn't mean you can't attack the frog at any other time it takes out its tongue. In fact, you absolutely can do that. Pay close attention to the attack patterns to keep a sharp eye for when Clyde makes the frog pull its tongue out, and act accordingly! Even when it's swinging the tongue around to destroy the barrels or using the spiked ball tip to hit Pac-Man, it's an opening you can take advantage of if you can learn to see it coming. INKY'S OWL MECHA Believe it or not, you'll want the mech to keep its eyes on you in the latter half of the fight. Triggering Inky's laser may be intimidating, but it also leaves the owl head open for you to flip-kick from underneath. This is the easiest way to knock some time off the encounter. The harder part is when the fight begins; with enough precision, you can quickly take off the first two wedges of Inky's health by speeding up to the mech and flip-kicking the head even while it's turned away from you. It can be tricky to pull off as the camera may rotate around Pac-Man, so practice landing safely as well.
November 16, 2025 at 6:53 PM
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(Content warning: Spoilers)

Quite interestingly, Pac-Man World 2: Re-Pac depicts Toc-Man as his own character independent of Orson.

Both Pac-Man and the game's captions refer to Toc-Man as Toc-Man, and Orson is never seen in-game (besides a cameo as an unlockable cosmetic).
November 15, 2025 at 4:04 PM
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An unused boxart variation for the Atari 5200 releaae of Pac-Man depicts the title character as being perhaps a little overjoyed to be eating dots in the maze.
November 14, 2025 at 5:04 PM