Pac-Man
Introduction
Pac-Man’s NES history is unusually tangled for such a simple game. Namco’s original 1980 arcade maze-chase design was ported to the NES more than once: Tengen, then an Atari Games subsidiary, released a licensed version in October 1988 and later an unlicensed version after a falling-out with Nintendo over cartridge lockout chips and licensing terms, while Namco Hometek published its own separate, generally less-regarded port in 1993 that Namco built directly from its own 1985 Famicom release. Whichever version is running, the core game is unchanged from the arcade original: players guide Pac-Man through a maze, eating dots and fruit while avoiding four uniquely-behaved ghosts, with four Power Pellets scattered around each maze letting Pac-Man briefly turn the tables and eat the ghosts for bonus points. Its instantly readable rules, tight maze design, and now-iconic ghost AI patterns made Pac-Man one of the most recognizable and enduringly popular video games ever made, on NES or anywhere else.
