The GHZ Forum

So Namco-Bandai decided that its 3-decade-old mascot needed a nip & tuck, like it tried back with Klonoa a while back. It's just that he's such a simple character that any real change would render him unrecognizable, so why bother? And why stop at the gloves of all places; surely he'd need some fingerless, knuckleless gloves to complement his high-top sneakers?

Best yet are the Ghosts redesigns:


Truly frightening stuff!

It's for a party game I, and I'm sure y'all, have absolutely no interest in. And I'm not sure if the public will have its say like with Klonoa nor if it's permanent.

I'm okay with the orange gloves and the Frank Sinatra eyes, but the high tops are stupid looking. Pinky's redesign is the most horrifying ghost design I've ever seen, so maybe they're onto something.

Maybe it will work in the context of this party game which anywho who cares isn't going to play.

He's also going to highschool to solve mysteries.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JuvXMpWxH4

5:43 is the new cartoon

I can't tell what's worse, him advertising pasta or that

Welp, not exactly the type of game that came to mind when this report from last year said Hirokazu Yasuhara was at work on a Pac-Man game to be released around this time. Wonder how he's doing.

The shoes look a little overdone, and the ghosts are like if someone went dumpster diving during the making of Luigi's Mansion and only just now pulled the doodles/rejects out of that shoebox in the closet. Or maybe just "wtf is this shit?"

I don't get it. 3D is notoriously expensive to produce, and likely to fail the home market (or take a really, really long time like HD did). Why is N-B producing this pile?

You know, if it weren't for the fact that they basically threw out the last 30 years worth of Pac-Man stuff for this show's premise, I'd actually like it a bit.

i wasn't aware Pac-Man had any mythos about him. What's left after Ms. Pac-Man (who I'm sure will show up as a saucy teen), Pac-Man Jr. and Baby Pac-Man?

I guess the redesign and cartoon are meant to make Pac-Man appeal to a younger audience, but, how popular was the old cartoon, exactly? I'm guessing not very. And that was much closer to the height of Pac-Man's popularity than this.

Dr. BUGMAN wrote:i wasn't aware Pac-Man had any mythos about him. What's left after Ms. Pac-Man (who I'm sure will show up as a saucy teen), Pac-Man Jr. and Baby Pac-Man?

Quite a bit, actually. Pac-In-Time and Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures are very story-heavy, as is the Pac-Man World trilogy and several spin-offs such as Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness and Pac-N-Roll. A lot of the aforementioned mythos is partially inspired by the Hanna-Barbera Pac-Man cartoon.

But this new show is practically giving Pac-Man the "Legend of Spyro" treatment. Pretty much everything in it is entirely new. I guess its kinda vaguely reminiscent of Hanna-Barbera's Pac-Man, but it's pretty clear that they wanted to bring Pac-Man back to square one for this outing.

Eh, it could have been worse.

Too bad it didn't turn out more like this, though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWL6j0SvqV0

The only Pac-Man I acknowledge is the one that looks like this:

Why, that does not look extreme at all! How is a silly cheese wheel supposed to battle the forces of darkness and make snappy remarks that we cool kids can relate to?

I dunno, I can still relate to wakka wakka wakka wakka wakka

I think everyone relates to wakka wakka wakka wakka.

Well, you have to admit something, the guy has been here a lot more than Sonic

Crazy Penguin wrote:The only Pac-Man I acknowledge is the one that looks like this:

Yeah, 3D doesnt work for the guy...

I dunno. I've always liked Pac-Man's more anthropomorphic form since the Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Pac-Man 2 was awesome and I loved Pac-in-Time for the PC as well (didn't play or cared much about it's SNES counterpart).

And it's for kids from crissakes.

Y'know, I think Pac-Land would've been one of my favorite platformers had it not such unintuitive controls (Buttons to move, arrows to jump? Whaa?)

Also relevant:


Conceptual work for the original arcade game.

Opa-Opa wrote: And it's for kids from crissakes.

I don't understand. How does one of his iteration better suit him to children than the other?

Tennis Ball Pacman is the best because he can jump. Though I never did get why he has arms and feet on the title screen...

I like this design (and the Pac-Man World design) despite being so generic. It's really hard to get a good characterization of Pac-Man when his original design is so nondescript, anyway.

But what are those circles at the base of his arms and legs supposed to be? Flattened intertubes? Pancakes?

I think they're inexplicable anatomic formations that serve to link appendages to the torso in lieu of an actual body part.