Speaker 1: All right, everybody, welcome back to the Surely You Can't
Be Serious Podcast. We are here on our continuing series
of the best video games of nineteen eighty one, and
today we are going to be discussing Mis pac Man.
Speaker 2: That's miss not missus, not miss not pack Woman, not Crazyato,
not Crazyato.
Speaker 3: That's for daying.
Speaker 2: Sure not Crazyata. All right, let's get into it. This
is an interesting one.
Speaker 1: Yes, few video games in history reached the status that
pac Man, the original pac Man achieved. Yes, because not
only was it a big hit in the video arcades,
but because of this character, the first hero in video games,
the marketing potential was out of this world. Yes, you
had pac Man shoes, you had pac Man lunchboxes, you
had pac Man watches, you had pac Man toilet seats,
which was a perfect thing to have. I think, if
you know, look in that way the seat works with
its opening closed.
Speaker 3: Perfect to make that a pac Man.
Speaker 1: That's it, pac Man cereal, pac Man cartoons.
Speaker 3: Did you watch the pack Man? Yes?
Speaker 1: I did, and I ate the Cereal, and it spawned
a multitude of sequels. But the first of those was
Miss pac Man. And so the question is you've got
this thing that is the biggest hit in video game history.
How can number two beat it?
Speaker 2: It's hard, yeah, but miss pac Man manages to pull
it off.
Speaker 1: Yes, And we will get into the differences and the
improvements on miss pac Man versus pac Man and why
she's better than he is in a little bit. But
first a little bit of history. So we talked about
Space Invaders being a huge deal.
Speaker 3: Yes, Their big game.
Speaker 1: At the time was this game called Missile Command. Do
you remember Missleman. Missile Command had been developed by Atari,
by this guy named Dave Thurer. He had also developed Tempest,
which was a huge hit for nineteen eighty Slash nineteen
eighty one.
Speaker 3: Right, little weirdness with.
Speaker 1: Tempests there and how exactly that falls, which is why
we didn't include it on our list, right, But someday.
Speaker 3: We will return to Tempest.
Speaker 1: Yes, But anyway, he created this game called Missile Command,
and there were some MIT students who had had some
success with pinball machines in the dormous. Guy's name who
started this idea was Doug McCrae, and he put a
pinball machine in the dorm and of course people loaded
their quarters in and he got himself enough to buy
a second pinball machine. Huh, And within just a couple
of years he's got pinball machines.
Speaker 3: He works with his buddies.
Speaker 1: They put pinball machines in every every single dorm or
like twenty different places.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: They realize the potential that regular video games are having,
and so the first game that they buy is this
game called Missile Command because it's a big hit. So
they're enjoying the benefits of Missile Command. But then they
start to see that their money is slowly getting less
and less, which is a problem because that's how they're
paying for their tuition and their beer. And so they
realize that that guys are getting good enough at Missile
Command that they can play for a really long time
on just one quarter. And part of the fun of
playing a game is not being able to beat the game.
Speaker 3: You keep coming back for it.
Speaker 1: So they have less interest and they have people spending
more time on less money. That's a problem, right, right,
But what do MIT guys do in those situations.
Speaker 3: They solve the problem. Hey, yeah, they do. They solve
the problem.
Speaker 1: And so what they did they looked at it and
they're like, Okay, what are the problems that they have.
Speaker 3: One of them is.
Speaker 1: That there's pattern here that's too easy to figure out.
So what they do is they spend Spring Break nineteen
eighty one creating a little conversion kit that just plugs
into the circuit board that already exists in Missile Command
and essentially create an entirely new type of game similar
to Missile Command, but it's got color, it's got better explosions,
it's got more random stuff, it's got more speed, all
kinds of improvements that they figure out on the game,
and all of a sudden, the quarters start coming back in,
and I think, wow, this is actually making us a
lot more money. I bet all of the arcades out
there who have Missile Command would like our system, and
so they sold it to them for two hundred and
ninety five dollars a pop.
Speaker 3: Nice. I mean, it's pretty easy.
Speaker 1: So when you go, hey, look the game that you've
got that's making ten bucks a day will make thirty
dollars a day if you put our little conversion kit
on there, and they'd re the game super Missile Attack.
Speaker 3: They sell a thousand.
Speaker 1: Wow, they sell a thousand within two months, so suddenly
they've made over a quarter of a million dollars. And
these are just guys in college living in the dorms
in nineteen eighty one money.
Speaker 3: That's fantastic. It's crazy, crazy money.
Speaker 1: And so not surprisingly, they all drop out of college
and they start their own company called the General Computer Corporation.
When I hear that name, I just have to think
to myself. These guys were trying to avoid being noticed. Yes, right,
I mean, how mundane and boring a name is the
General Computer Corporation.
Speaker 3: But it didn't work. They got noticed by that.
Speaker 1: Little company I mentioned just a bit ago, named Atari,
who was none too happy that they had taken missile
command and changed it into super Missile Attack and not
given a any of the credit.
Speaker 3: Or any of the money. I could see that, and.
Speaker 1: So big bad Atari decides to sue tiny little General
Computer Corporation for fifteen million dollars, also nineteen eighty one money,
by the way. So these three guys, these these three
college guys, get the lawsuit and they go this is
the coolest thing that has ever happened. It makes the papers,
it makes the magazines. Doug McCrae's dad calls him up
and says, number one, are you going to win? This
lawsuit and number two, if you don't do you have five.
Speaker 3: Million dollars this guy and.
Speaker 1: He says, I do not have five million dollars, but
it is okay because we are going to win. And
so they fight the big fight, except that Atari is
smart enough to realize that they don't have a sure win.
And what happens if they don't have a sure win.
If they lose, it sets a precedent, which most Americans
probably know. We have this thing called precedent in the law,
which says, if it's been decided before, you have to
follow what the old decision was. So if some court says, hey,
it's okay for these guys to come in and modify your.
Speaker 2: Video games, that means blood the market.
Speaker 1: It's going to happen to all of the video games.
So Atari decides to settle. Part of the settlement is
that the college guys agree that they will not do
any more conversions on video games without the manufacturer's consent. Well,
during this litigation, all of which is happening again in
nineteen eighty one, they were still doing conversions. They were
still making conversions sure, and what, of course, was the
most famous video game that they decided to do a conversion.
Speaker 3: For pac Man. Exactly. Wow.
Speaker 2: So they make a conversion kit for pac Man, which
they call Craziato.
Speaker 3: Yes, have you seen Craziato? I have pac Man with legs.
Speaker 2: It literally is the same game as Miss pac Man,
except to have pac Man with legs and instead of
ghosts you have bubble creatures, gremlin type of things.
Speaker 1: It was a very very paltry conversion as far as
the graphics go, but as far as the gameplay goes next.
Speaker 2: Level yeah, yeah, fantastic. The legs are weird, but other
than that, it's miss pack awesome.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is.
Speaker 1: So at that point, have already they've got this conversion
for pac Man. Yes, but they've settled the case swearing
that they will not do any conversions without the approval
of the developer of the game.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: Well, Atari didn't develop pac Man, right. Pac Man was
a Midway game. And so they call Midway and they say, listen,
we have this lawsuit with Atari.
Speaker 2: We kicked there butt, We're gonna kick here.
Speaker 1: But it's it's a secret settlement. It's a confidential settlement,
a confidential agement.
Speaker 3: So there's no way for Midway to know what happened.
Speaker 1: They just bluff their way through and they say, listen,
we've got this conversion. We think it'd be great, but
we need your permission or you know, we can just
go through the lawsuit process and we're going to go
ahead and beat you two.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Well, as it turns out, Midway was actually looking for
pac Man two. They were looking for it. They had
been waiting on Namco, and Namco was dragging their feet,
and Midway got impatient. And so when these guys come
to them with this new game, they're like, you got it,
love it, And Midway and General Computer Corporation form an
alliance and together they create Miss pac Man.
Speaker 2: Now, technically the pac Man name is owned by Namco. Yeah,
Midway is just the distributor in America. Yes, in America,
and GCC makes the agreement with Midway. Right, that comes
into play a little bit later, Yeah, because Namco sues
the pants off of it. Now, Doug McCrae says, I
don't understand how Namco suit us, because they were involved
in the process. They got together, they took the legs off,
they decided to make it a woman. There was a
lot going on that, he says. The president of Namco
was writing us back and forth and giving us ideas.
I don't know how in the world they got to
They weren't a part of this agreement. So unlike pac Man, yep,
this character has lipstick and a bow and a bow yes,
and a mole. Yeah, and an eye.
Speaker 3: A mole like Marilyn Monroe. Yep.
Speaker 2: Well that mole makes her super sexy.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, miss pac Man, it's hot. Other differences. You
have four mazes instead of just one. Yes, You've got
the pink Maze, the Blue Maize, the light blue Maze,
the brown maze, and the dark blue.
Speaker 2: Made you chase fruit rather than fruit being stationary, it
hops along. You got to chase it.
Speaker 1: You've got multiple warp tunnels yep, instead of just wasph
one right, You're going.
Speaker 2: After cherry, strawberries, oranges, pretzels, apples, pears, bananas.
Speaker 3: Yeap. The ghost and this is a huge deal.
Speaker 2: The ghosts, at least a couple of them.
Speaker 3: Have random movements, which means you can't do some sort
of pattern. Can you just do the original pac Man?
Speaker 1: That's right, which was a big deal because it meant
more people were shoving their money in and not playing
as long which is exactly what Midway was looking for.
Speaker 2: Also, the Orange Ghost is no longer Clyde.
Speaker 1: But Sue right when she dies ms pac Man does
not like circumference out and.
Speaker 3: Explode go into infinity. She just does a little spin
and fall.
Speaker 1: She swoons. Yeah, yep, Yes, they have new music and
new cut scenes.
Speaker 3: A new series were a lot of fun. Absolutely at
the time.
Speaker 2: Is like I'm watching a movie inside my game, right
I got to this point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the new music had a lot to do
with how fun those scenes were.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So here's something interesting on the music. It's iconic, right,
we can play it for you now. So the composer
of this music is a guy named Naoki Haigashio. Okay supposedly. Yeah,
his name appears on a credit, but other than that,
I can't find him anywhere. Interesting, So we've had this
fantastic music. It's kind of like the poster for Fright Night.
The guy's name is there, but nobody can confirm that
he was actually involved in the process. It's just like
this random credit of a guy that nobody seems to
be able to find.
Speaker 3: Now. Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, interesting and such a huge part of the game.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: I remember when I saw him as pac Man for
the first time. Yeah, so this is the honest truth.
I went to an arcade called Wizards Untils, Oklahoma. There
were so many people around the game. I could see
the cabinet, but I could not get close to the screen.
And I finally somebody came out of the crowd. I'm like,
what did you see and he's like, well, it's like
pac Man except better.
Speaker 3: I'm like, well, tell me, you know.
Speaker 2: He's like, well, she has a bow and lipstick and
an eye, and I was like, You've got to be
kidding me. It was next level excitement.
Speaker 3: You were excited about that.
Speaker 2: I couldn't wait to play this game.
Speaker 1: I saw it and I'm like, I'm a little kid.
I'm there with my older brother, right, and I'm looking
at it him like this is the same as pac
Man and he says, no, there are no patterns in
this one. I was like, ah, oh wow. And then
I'm watching and the maze changes on level three, right,
and I was.
Speaker 3: Like, oh, oh wow, different level. Yeah.
Speaker 2: That night, literally I had no prayer of playing that yame.
Like I saw the crowd and thought, I don't care
about playing it. I just want to see it and
I didn't even see it. This game sold over one
hundred and fifteen thousand cabinets in the nineteen eighties. Did
you ever see the one that had the speed button?
Speaker 3: No, like you could speed up and slow down?
Speaker 2: There was a Yeah. So there are some versions where
you played normal speed. There are some versions that are
high speed, and then there's one that you can regulate
your speed with a button.
Speaker 3: Oh no, I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 1: I think, if I remember right, the original that I
saw back in eighty one, it was regular sh speed. Yeah,
I think I think the high speed didn't come until
later on. But to me, that's the only way to
play high speed is the Island like you?
Speaker 3: Yeah? All righty?
Speaker 2: Have you ever seen the Friends episode where Phoebe gets
Monica and Chandler as their wedding gift a stand up
misspac Man arcade game?
Speaker 1: Yes, Chandler has the claw. He plays eight hours and
he can move his hand and.
Speaker 2: He uses the high score to put dirty words in there.
Speaker 3: That sounds something that I would do.
Speaker 2: And so they have to spend all this time trying
to erase all of the dirty words because unplugging won't work.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the game back then actually had a kind of
rom chip in them that would even if it went unplugged,
you didn't lose your I scores.
Speaker 2: And so an attempt to erase the dirty scores, Phoebe
spends a lot of time and fails, fails, and so
right as Ross's son Ben walks, she Unleasha is a
just a torrent of proof, a flood of curse words,
a storm of cussing.
Speaker 3: Oh that that episode is really funny. It is you.
Speaker 1: We used to have a free video game arcade thing
here in Norman, Oklahoma called top Dog. Sadly, it did
not It did not make it because.
Speaker 2: A hot dog plays and they had games.
Speaker 3: They had games that you could play for free.
Speaker 1: They had Gallagha, they had misspac Man, they had Donkey Kong,
Zaxon Zaxon, And what was the one that you sat
down to play?
Speaker 3: Moon Patrol? Moon Patrol?
Speaker 1: That's right, Ye, sorry to see you go, top Dog.
Speaker 3: We we miss you. Yeah. This was one of my
favorite games of all time.
Speaker 2: It is listed as one of the greatest games and
one of the most successful video games of all time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the Empire strikes back to Star Wars.
Speaker 1: It is it is, It really is all right, So
that does it for this episode.
Speaker 3: We've got more in the series coming up, so be
sure to join
Speaker 2: Us In the meantime, d I'm gonna go play some
crazyato and we'll be here next week to talk to
you about another game, The Defender.