THURSDAY THEME SONG: PAC-MAN

This week is the last installment of 'Toons Based on Video Games' Month. This week's theme is arguably the most popular video game of all time.

Pac-Man

Pac-Man followed the adventures of Pac-Man, his wife, Mrs. Pac-Man and their child Pac-Baby. Together they live in Pac-Land and spend their time stopping the evil Mezmeron from getting his hands on the 'power pellets', the source of Pac-Man's power.

Mezmeron's hired help consists of Pac-Man's well known video game adversaries, the Ghost-Monsters: Inky, Blinky, Pinky, Clyde and Sue. They are the typical bumbling villains that always seem to be menacing at the beginning of the episode but goofballs by the end of the episode.

Pac-Man was created by Namco Games in 1978. Its popularity grew to epic proportions over the next decade and Hanna-Barbera decided to created their own show based on the game. This series lasted 43 episodes from 1982-1983. Originally, Pac-Man was part of a 90 minute programming block in 1982 by Hanna-Barbera called The Pac-Man/Little Rascals/Ritchie Rich Show but then broke of into its own half hour show in 1983.

The Pac-Man series also had its own video game spin-off, called Pac-Land which was a side-scrolling platform game, like Super Mario Bros.



Here is an interesting fact about the Pac-Man video game that I got from Wikipedia:

A "perfect Pac-Man game" is defined as one where the player completes all 256 levels with a maximum point score and without losing a life. The first such game was verified by the Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard on July 3, 1999. Billy Mitchell, of Hollywood, FL, achieved the feat in six hours. To attain the maximum possible score of 3,333,360 points, it was necessary for Mitchell to eat every fruit, every energizer, every blue ghost and every dot for 256 boards.