Super Pac-Man Collection is a "plug & play" game compilation featuring four Namco arcade titles. It was developed by HotGen and released by Jakks Pacific in 2006 under the "Plug it in & Play TV Games" brand. It is officially considered "Edition 3" of the Pac-Man plug & play series; it is the successor to the Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man plug & plays, and would be followed by Arcade Gold featuring Pac-Man.
The Super Pac-Man Collection console is colored yellow with red, white, and blue accents, similarly to the U.S. Bally Midway artwork of its namesake arcade game. It features a yellow joystick with a translucent cutout in the front, making the joystick top resemble Pac-Man; alongside a red fire button. A faux-coin slot and lock appears on the front of the unit, resembling the coin mechanism of an arcade machine.
This console is based on Sunplus hardware, as is the case for the majority of Jakks Pacific plug & play systems. The player's high scores are saved into memory, and can be erased from the game selection menu.
Games[]
Super Pac-Man Collection features four games, including:
The game ports were developed by HotGen Limited, and are closely modeled after their arcade counterparts. All games feature close approximations of the original graphics and sound effects, though some of the games have their sound pitched an octave higher or lower (depending on the title). Every game has its life indicator and scoring information moved to the righthand side of the screen. The player can pause and/or exit out to the game selection screen mid-game by pressing the "Menu" button.
The included version of Pac-Man is based on the version previously released as a GameKey cartridge for the Ms. Pac-Man plug & play, though appears to have improved ghost A.I. in comparison (with Blinky taking the correct path at the beginning of each round). Super Pac-Man, Pac-Man Plus, and Pac & Pal are newly-created ports for this plug & play.
Trivia[]
Prerelease image of a "GameKey" version of the console.
A GameKey variant of Super Pac-Man Collection was planned to be released (alongside the standard model), but was ultimately canceled. Prerelease images of the GameKey version show it with two face buttons instead of one. The final console still mentions the GameKey brand in its copyright splash screen and, interestingly, the debug menu.
The Super Pac-Man Collection (or some variation thereof) was originally planned to feature Jr. Pac-Man; notably, the game port was demonstrated at Toy Fair 2006.[1] The game was likely removed from the final product for legal reasons, possibly tied to the (then-ongoing) litigation surrounding Ms. Pac-Man. Programmer Carl Muller recalled the game not being finished outside of graphic and sound porting.[2]
The console displayed at the Toy Fair features two fire buttons, which may suggest Jr. Pac-Man was intended to release as a GameKey cartridge rather than as a built-in game.
The soundtrack to Jr. Pac-Man would later appear in the debug menu of Retro Arcade featuring Pac-Man, likely in connection with this canceled port.
This compilation marks the first home port of Pac-Man Plus, and the first official release of Pac & Pal in North America (excluding its location test as Pac-Man & Chomp-Chomp).
While the console ultimately shipped following the formation of Namco Bandai Games, all copyright notation solely credits Namco (both on the packaging and in-game).
The Sunplus-based plug & play port of Pac-Man is connected in code to a port of Ms. Pac-Man; however, Ms. Pac-Man is not natively accessible on any Pac-Man-branded system (or vice-versa). The games can be switched between each other (on a technical level) via a one-byte code change.[3][4]
Pac & Pal has its two high score table themes erroneously swapped (i.e. scoring 2nd-to-5th place plays the 1st place theme and vice-versa). This error would be carried over into later Pac-Man plug & plays.
As with many Jakks Pacific plug & plays, a Debug Mode can be accessed by entering a command on the copyright splash screen (hold Up, press and hold A, release Up, and press Down). This mode includes (in order) a hardware test mode, a save data test, a color test mode, a music test mode, and a "Pac-Man" color test (featuring rows of Ghosts).
The music test mode notably allows the user to play nearly the entire sound sets of the included games, featuring all music tracks and sound effects (including those of the unused Ms. Pac-Man game).
Earlier (?) packaging revisions of the console use artwork modified from the box art for the Commodore 64 and IBM PC ports of Super Pac-Man. A more common version of the system uses general Hideki Tanaami artwork of Pac-Man on the packaging; this change is likely tied to the mandation of the 1999 "Pac-Man Character Manual".
The console's ROM data starts with a legal notice surrounding the usage of GameKey cartridges, and threatens litigation against attempts to reverse-engineer the hardware. As to exactly why this text is included is unknown, though it may have been presented as a deterrent to bootleggers analyzing the code (despite that no hardware-level bootlegs of Jakks Pacific plug & plays ever existed).
↑"The Jr Pacman port was not completed AFAIK but maybe it was playable; the sounds (and gfx) were probably separately converted from the game though as a placeholder. The code would not have been in any released hardware and i doubt any development boards survive with it on." (Carl Muller, personal communication)
