//------------------------------// // Episode 9: Pac-Man's 35th Anniversary Specail // Story: The Adorable/Awesome Video Game Colt // by Matthais Unidostres //------------------------------// I was originally gonna make a pony parody and say "Pac-Mare," but it's his 35th anniversary, so he deserves a little more respect than that. Button Mash tried juggling three yellow balls, but quickly dropped them and then tripped over them. He's gonna play some games from past And also recent games while they last As Button stood playing on a Pac-Man and Galaga arcade cabinet as Sweetie Belle sang behind him. He'd rather have. . . A Changeling Drone. . . Spit a glob of green slime in his ear! Button ate the cherries off Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon's sundaes, much to their shock and anger. Button quickly threw white sheets over their heads and ran. He'd rather drink. . . A freezing milkshake. . . And get the worst brain freeze of the year! Button was chased through town by the fillies under the sheets. Button and Sweetie Belle turned the tables on them by pelting the bullies with blue paint bombs. He's the most awesome gamer you'll ever behold He's the awesome Nintendo Colt Button ran out of the video game store with a Pac-Man Amiibo. He's the awesome Microsoft, Sony Colt He's The Awesome Video Game Colt! Button bit into a cucumber, and then a lemon, only to quickly spit it out and make a comical face. Episode 9: Pac-Man's 35th Anniversary Specail "I'd like to start off by wishing Pac-Man a happy 35th Anniversary and many more," Button said, "I'd also love to have a Pac-Man and Galaga arcade cabinet in my room. . . but I don't." "Pac-Man is a humble, simple game. Which makes sense, because it's an old game, but a good game. It's very addictive and it keeps pushing you to get a high score." "So yeah, I may not have an arcade cabinet, but I do have a laptop," Button said with a grin, "That's a good thing about simple, old, good games. Emulations of them are easy to come by." Button turned his laptop on and started up a game of Pac-Man. "Namco and first released Pac-Man in Japan on May 22, 1980. It came here in October of 1980. I'm pretty sure nearly everypony knows how to play Pac-Man. You go around a maze eating dots while trying to avoid four ghosts that kill you if you run into them. There are four bigger flashing dots called Power Pellets, and if you eat them, the ghosts turn blue, and Pac-Man can eat blue ghosts for extra points. You can also eat Bonus Fruit for extra points. There's a Cherry, a Strawberry, an Orange, an Apple, a Melon, a Galaxian Starship, a Bell, and a Key." Button shrugged, "Yeah, I know, three of those aren't fruits, but let's just go with it." Button played through the level, eating dots, chomping ghosts, and gobbling bonus fruits. He's clearly enjoying the game. ". . . . . . .OH! The review! Sorry. Okay, so you'd probably think there's not much to talk about. I mean, it's just Pac-Man, right? Well, you'd be wrong to this this way. There'a a lot more to Pac-Man than you think." "First, the ghosts. Many people know that they have names. The red one is Blinky the Shadow. The pink one is Pinky the Speedy. The light blue one is Inky the Bashful. And the Orange one is Clyde the Pokey. The title screen tells you the name, so it's not really much of a secret." Button's eyes widened, "But would you believe the ghosts don't move randomly? Yeah, they're actually programmed to move a certain way! Blinky always goes after Pac-Man directly, and get faster when you eat enough dots. Pinky always go four spaces ahead of Pac-Man. Inky always goes to the spot twice the distance from Blinky to two spaces in front of Pac-Man, in that direction. Clyde directly chases Pac-Man like Blinky, but when Clyde gets within an eight-space radius of Pac-Man, he actually runs away to the lower-left corner of the maze like a big coward. It's like, you have to actually try to get killed by him. But since you have four other ghost moving around the maze, it might actually be easier to run into Clyde than you think." "So yeah, in order to get a high score, you have to survive for a long time. And in order to do that, you have figure out where the ghosts are gonna go so you can avoid them. Pac-Man was designed to be a never ending game. You just play until you run out of lives while trying to get a high score. The longer you played, the faster the ghosts would move. The ghosts even become immune to the Power Pellets! But it turns out that a programming error causes level 256 to glitch out. Half of the screen gets covered in random symbols, making it impossible to beat." "This sets up perfect score for Pac-Man: 3,333,360 points. But imagine beating 255 levels of this game, let alone perfectly! That's crazy! You know how hard this game is when everything starts moving so fast and the Power Pellet's time of effect gets shorter and shorter?!" As Button plays, Pac-Man gets caught by Blinky and the game ends. Button shrugged, "Well, that's Pac-Man, but we can't talk about Pac-Man without talking about the game it's so often paired with: Galaga." Button started up Galaga and started playing. "There's really not much to say about this game. You're flying a space ship trying to destroy an army of alien bugs. It's just a 2D space shooter, but a good one. One of the coolest parts about it is sometimes a 'boss' Galaga, it's not really a boss, it's the same size and strength as the other enemies, will come and steal your ship with a tractor beam. This is bad because it makes you loose a life, but if you are able to destroy the 'boss' Galaga with another life, then the stolen ship is freed and attaches to your ship, giving you double fire power!" Button demonstrated this, and then became firing away at the enemies with a barrage of lazers. "Yeah! Take that!" Button said. "I've also heard that Galaga also has a programming error like Pac-Man. Apparently, when you beat Stage 255, it starts over at Stage 0. Sometimes the whole thing crashes. Either way, Pac-Man and Galaga are totally connected. They're so connected that in Super Smash Bros, Pac-Man can use the 'boss' Galaga's tractor beam to grab opponents." A clip of Pac-Man drawing in Bowser with a tractor beam played. Button stopped playing and picked up a juice box. "Well, this is where I'd end things. . ." Button took a long sip of juice, and then said, "But if we're gonna talk about Pac-Man, then we just gotta bring up Ms. Pac-Man and Jr. Pac-Man." "These two games try and shake up the Pac-Man formula with a few differences. In Ms. Pac Man, there are actually four different mazes, the ghosts move around more randomly, the bonus fruits bounce around the maze, and Clyde is replaced by a ghost named Sue. The game also has three cut-scenes." Button nodded solemnly, "Yeah, an arcade game with cut-scenes. This has to be one of the first cut-scenes in video game history! Anyway, the cut-scenes show Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man meeting each other and then getting Jr. Pac-Man from the stork. But what bugs me is that Ms. Pac-Man has the same glitch on level 256." Button is confused at that, "What were they thinking? How did they not fix this by now?" "Well, Jr. Pac-Man changes the formula even more. In this game, there are seven mazes, and they're actually twice the width of the monitor, meaning the game actually side scrolls to keep up with Jr. Pac-Man. There are also six Power Pellets instead of four, and when the bouncing Bonus Fruit touches dots, they grow big and make you go slower. The Fruit also makes the Power Pellets explode for some reason. And if that's not cryptic enough, Clyde gets replaced again this time by some ghost named Tim. Gosh, Clyde just can't catch a break." "And if that's not cryptic enough, the cut-scenes in this game show Jr. Pac-Man making friends with a ghost named Yum-Yum. . . who is apparently Blinky's. . . . duaghter?. . . I . . .?" Button grabbed his juice box and drank it all in once go. "What were thinking!? That blows my mind on so many levels!" Button sighed, "Okay, that's more than enough Pac-Man for one day. But that doesn't mean I'm actually done with Pac-Man on this show. I'm sure many of you wanna know how I feel about the Ghostly Adventures Pac-Man platforming games." Button looked over at his PC and said, "Well, just let me buy and download the game off of Steam and I'll tell ya. . ." To be continued. . .