Retro games (Attempt 2)

Before halo reach gave access to multi combat, Before wars were fought on call of duty and even before the Nintendo 64 roamed the earth. A genre of games existed, A world of video-games where players would see the game mechanics for what they were and great games were created with graphics equivalent to paint splats because people were not "eye candy" obsessed like they are today.

A prime example of a retro game that works in this concept is Namco and Midway's brain child, "Pac-man". In pac-man the player controls a yellow sphere which when moved turns into a repeatedly opening and shutting mouth with a seemingly endless appetite for stale marshmallows who has in some way offended 4 disembodied spirits who now follow him around endlessly.


The main objective of Pac-man is to move around the maze endlessly eating the items and gathering points whilst avoiding the four ghosts. The points are worked out as shown below, For each small marshmallow eaten the player is rewarded 10 points, The larger marshmallows award 50 points and gives Pac-man a small invincibility, speed boost and the ability to eat ghosts for bonus points. It is the players choice when to play these items in order to give them a better advantage.

The enemies located in the game have been given nicknames throughout the series, The most common are Blinky, Pinky, Inky and a seeming outcast, Clyde. The ghosts chase, patrol and charge after pac-man in the maze and create a sense of challenge to the game in order to keep the player thinking.The ghosts also give off a sense of intelligence, For example the cyan ghost (Inky) has a habit of breaking off from the pack to seemingly head pac-man off across the map when inside all the ghost is doing is alternating paths depending on which buttons the player presses.


"A game is a system in which players engage in artificial conflict defined by rules, That results in a quantifiable outcome." (K. Salen and E. Zimmerman, 2004) This statement when applied to pac-man loosely translates to the points outcome or lives used at the end of the round. The outcomes can be determined to how the player reacts to the choices given to them in the game, For example. When the player gets the giant pellet which allows them to eat ghosts and move faster, Do they use the speed boost and temporary invincibility to devour more points? Or do they chase after the ghosts and receive bonus points at the cost of a few small pellets. As does the fruit spawn, Do bonus points sound more alluring? Or is the bonus a distraction to get the ghosts closer.
Within each game the choices made will alter the outcome in the best way suited to the player. For example the overall points score may be lower when compared to the games where collecting bonus fruit  could have given them a better score at the cost of a few extra credits.

Pac-man is also one of the base crossovers of Paideau and Ludus, A game that has basic rules that can be interpreted by the player differently than originally intended, When one player decides that the ghosts are chasing them another may decide that they simply got lucky and on a patrol found where they were hiding, As i mentioned before, The fruit may be an alluring bunch of points but the area they are created in seems to be pretty close to the ghosts initial spawning point.

Paideau as a term means to simply play for pleasure, The player simply picks up at will and leaves for whatever reason to continue with other activities whereas Ludus is the opposite. The outcome is clear and the only reason to play is fulfillment related to the outcome, Ludus is also strained by rules that enforce the player to the games path which also gives the player a set moment to join or leave. This may include being penalised for dropping out or the inability to join a team before the end of the round to keep the game balanced. Rules do however exist in Paideau games, For example when a child colors in a drawing they know that they can very well draw all over the picture with colors yet they feel a sense of achievement if they keep within the lines, This is a sense of Paideau that takes place in common life. Pac-man's Paideau element is the main map of the level, The player can essentially go any way possible to achieve their goal but will still have to make choices referring to the walls and ghosts chasing after Pac-man.


An easy way to explain how Pac-man works as a game is to look at a tank of snakes or a fish tank with carnivorous fish in. Pac-man is represented as a food item, For this example we will use a mouse. The mouse is dropped into a tank of 4 snakes, The snakes are faster and know the tank better than the mouse but will conflict about the eating of said mouse. The mouse can use this unfortunate property as a tool for its prolonged stay in life. The smaller mouse can hide behind and duck under objects that the snakes are to big or unable to get to. However, When the mouse enters a tunnel of some sorts (cardboard for example) and 2 different snakes have been pursuing it then the mouse will be trapped and it will be game over. This is the same in Pac-man when the player is in the heat of gaming and with their pulse racing they make a wrong turn and land themselves in the middle of 2 oncoming ghosts resulting in a game over.


Throughout concentrating the level layouts and the idea of the game, I define the genre as a action based maze game that creates elements of "fun" with challenging options and multiple objectives that differ for each player. The action setting comes from the players constant look for survival and empty paths whereas the maze is simply derived from the walls that create a seeming maze when in retrospect the paths are virtually free.


The game does however have one serious problem. Arcade games created in this era mostly have no end, The player simply plays until they've deposited their bank balance into the machine or the game ceases to become enjoyable. Pac-man is shown to this element as the levels differ mildly from the previous and the ghosts differ barely from their previous natures in that they occasionally will react wildly and speed up or out of the blue pull an unknown act and seemingly run away from the player only to quickly change their mind thus trapping gullible players in corners or otherwise hinder their progress. This idea however is also Pac-mans downfall, When the player reaches the 255th level the game tries to alter the amount of fruit or other bonus items that appear past the cabinets limit. When the level is progressed a "ticker" (like the kind used in nightclubs) ticks to the desired amount of fruit necessary to the level. The ticker attempts to add 1 to the previous number but rolls over to the blank setting which creates a similar effect to the predicted events of the Millennium Bug creating a wall of text, objects and numerous cabinet based symbols to swamp half of the screen rendering the level unplayable and impossible to complete. This is infamously known as the "256 Kill Screen" and known to many veteran players as Pac-mans final level. The player can still collect the other pellets located on the working side but will inevitably end the game in rage or through choice.


On evaluation, Pac-man is a classic example of simplicity is the best key, It sticks to the principles of creating a game that anyone can play but leaving room for mastery whilst still maintaining a professional level of competitiveness between players old and new. My personal favorite aspect of Pac-man is the fact that no 2 players will take the same route, This is incredibly necessary towards the creation of a enjoyable game in my opinion because it creates a game that no matter how much it has been played you will always discover a new way. This is lackluster in modern games like Halo where players will often find preferred routes to take that miss out marksmen and heavily armed troops to save time and effort when replayed on harder difficulties. Pac-man evades this repetition with the way that the ghosts give chase. The player can take the same route each time but the ghosts will never follow a straight path towards the player. For this reason I would pick a quick game of Pac-man on an old cabinet instead of a glorified HD shooting game that gives the player feelings of fear and adrenaline whilst in a safe environment, I feel that Pac-man where lackluster in aesthetics still gives the same rush as modern games whilst retaining its vintage feel and its simple nature and objectives.