Hey all, Ernie here with a piece from David Buck, who spent a lot of time recently researching obscure patterns that once took the arcades of the world by storm. It’s time for a little Pac-Mania!
Today in Tedium: As a kid, I owned the Atari 2600 port of Pac-Man. I enjoyed the game from that moment onward, even if it wasn’t the ideal introduction to Pac-Man. The rich history of the game, its sequels, and spin-offs is wellcoveredaroundtheinternet, but the act of playing the game and perfecting one’s own performance within its legendary mazes doesn’t seem to generate much buzz in the 21st century. The Pac-Man patterns are one of the most interesting aspects of the game’s entire history. In today’s Tedium we’ll be revisiting Pac-Man through the many ways it has been—and continues to be—played, mastered, and adored today. So get those patterns committed to memory and don’t forget to eat plenty of fruit before you do. — David @ Tedium
- The Pac-Man Wild Edition™ video slot is the next step in gaming for those fans, and we’re sure it’s going to be just as well-loved by a number of slot-playing generations. If It Looks Like Pac-Man, It Must Be Pac-Man!
- Pac-Man Wild Edition. 5-reels, 25-lines in normal mode up to 75-lines in feature play, Pacman Wild, Wild Power Pellet, Scatter Pays in any position, Free Games Bonus, Extra Chance Feature, up to x50 Multipliers, Four different Jackpots, 94.20% RTP, Ainsworth.
- The Pac-Man: Wild Edition slot is a slot that does offer all players a range of different real money staking options, but it is also a slot that can be accessed and played for free, but the most excitement will always come long when you play the Pac-Man: Wild Edition for real money.
Pac-Slot is an arcade medal game released by Namco in 1996. It is a video slot machine that dispenses medals. 1 Gameplay 2 Trivia 3 Gallery 3.1 Screenshots 3.2 Artwork The player must line up three of the same image next to each other, and if done correctly, they will win the corresponding amount of medals. The player can bet up to three times for a better outcome. The fact Ainsworth collaborated with BANDAI NAMCO in developing the game means the new PAC-MAN WILD EDITION slots will remain true to the hit game that everyone knows and loves. The base game is a 30-line video slot.
![Slots Slots](https://www.freeslots99.com/i/s/pac-man-wild-edition-ainsworth.png)
Today’s issue is sponsored by Lemonade. More from them in a second.
The final stage of the arcade version is Pac-Man. After 255 levels of normal play, the game experiences a glitch where half of the screen becomes a jumbled mess and effectively ends the game. This kill screen is occasionally the subject of great fascination among fans and programmers. In 2007, Don Hodges broke down the reason why the kill screen appears as a problem in the code, where the program messes up as it attempts to draw the fruit. He goes on to offer a potential fix for the code in his article, so if your Assembly isn’t too rusty, you can always try it at home.
Precise turns and patterns galore
Pac-Man was a cultural phenomenon from the beginning, but evolved into a beloved, inclusive, and instantly recognizable part of modern day pop culture. The game spawned animated TV shows, several arcade variants, home versions, and music since its initial release on May 22, 1980.
Playing and mastering the game became the subject of intense research and study on the part of the game’s players. While eye-hand coordination and making quick turns are vital to Pac-Man success, players began developing patterns of taking Pac-Man through each maze in a way that maximized scores and a series of established patterns for the mazes emerged.
Several books arrived in the early 1980s that sought to assist Pac-Man players in their eternal quest to obtain the highest score. By establishing patterns that would help Pac-Man clear each maze quickly while avoiding the ghosts, enabled players to engage in an early sort of gaming fandom and community contributions. The perfecting and sharing of patterns became so popular that at one point, Bally Manufacturing Corporation—who licensed the arcade version at the time—changed the programming on some of their games to render the established patterns completely useless.
This didn’t deter players from creating and perfecting new patterns, and Bally would later leave arcade licensing behind to focus on fitness. The “new chip” programming provided more of an opportunity for engaging in Pac-Man pattern perfection. Author Ken Uston (more on him later) would write about in his revised version of Mastering Pac-Man, noting that, “For every countermeasure, there’s a counter-countermeasure” and that experimenting with various patterns, he was able to get a few of his established ones to work while developing new ones dedicated to the new chip programming.
While Uston’s Mastering Pac-Man provided an in-depth look at the Pac-Man patterns, with a revised edition that covered the Atari version, knock-off games, and the expanded chip, other books arrived to provide a more accessible portal into the hobby.
The ultimate goal of a good Pac-Man player.
April, 1982 brought Pac-Man practitioners The Video Master’s Guide to Pac-Man from authors Jim Sykora and John Birkner. The 95-page tome boasted “new secrets” for both stand up and sit down arcade version of the game and also featured a workaround for the pattern-squashing chip.
Perhaps the most succinct (and engaging) book, however, was How to Win at Pac-Man. Written by the editors of Consumer Guide Magazine and published by Penguin Books in 1982, the book is a vastly more entertaining presentation of the Pac-Man patterns, but lacks the depth and analysis of other books. How to Win at Pac-Man presents the three primary patterns and the famous ninth key pattern, along with tips about using the tunnels, misdirecting the ghosts, and using the hiding places on each board. The tome also explores patterns for the Atari 2600 version that work great—at least they worked fine when I played the game as a kid.
The patterns are still being used by players today—and continuing to be perfected by an entirely new generation of Pac-Maniacs.
Lemonade makes insurance that doesn’t suck (finally)
Insurance was supposed to be a good thing—we’d pool our money together and if something bad happened to one of us, we’d be covered. But insurance companies have since become the big bad wolves who take all our money and make us wait an eternity to receive claims (if at all).
Introducing a refreshingly different approach to insurance. Lemonade has transformed the insurance model—treating your money as if it’s just that—yours. No more long waiting times and fighting claims. Lemonade takes a flat fee, pay claims super fast, and give back what’s left to causes you care about. You heard that right. Lemonade donates all unclaimed premiums to communities and non-profits you care about.
The maximum score a player can achieve in the arcade version of Pac-Man. A lively debate about why the game’s maximum possible score peaks at this seemingly random number can readily be found online, but according to the online Pac-Man museum. Apparently, this total is the sum total of all the pellets, fruit, and ghosts found through the game’s 255 regular levels. In 1999, hot sauce manufacturer Billy Mitchell ended up achieving the score after a six-hour marathon session during which he basically finished the game by reaching the jumbled mess of level 256. From then on, he continued his attempts to set high scores in other games. Later, Mitchell was accused of using emulation to accomplish high scores in Donkey Kong, and his scores were subsequently removed from both Guinness World Records and Twin Galaxies. He’s been fighting a legal battle to get them restored ever since—despite the fact that many of the scores have been surpassed in recent years by other players.
Mastering Pac-Man was written by a guy known for getting kicked out of casinos.
How a professional gambler helped breathe life into the Pac-Man Pattern phenomenon
Before he developed an interest in computers and arcade games, Ken Uston was a consultant/financial planner. When he became a professional gambler, Uston made a name for himself as Blackjack expert in 1974, authoring several books on the subject and at times, playing Blackjack in disguise at casinos that had previously thrown him out. He was not cheating, but simply cultivated a high level of skill in the game—a concept he applied to just about everything in his life and work.
A growing fascination with computer and arcade games in the early 1980s led him to writing about them and forging professional relationships with some of the companies he wrote about. His book, Mastering Pac-Man, was essentially a textbook for conquering the game. Uston’s manual is pragmatic and straightforward, but also realistic and even a bit cautionary. He never offers the patterns as a one size fits all solution to the game, but rather a tool to achieve excellence in Pac-Man. Toward the end of the book, he cautions readers that the patterns may not always work as well as intended:
In Pac-Man, remember you are playing an electronic opponent. There will be times you think you’ve played the pattern exactly—with no delays—and yet the monsters move differently than expected. This is because you can never distinguish a millisecond delay (thousandth of a second) in your pattern—but the computers can and do. One way to minimize human delay in Pac-Man is to turn the control knob in the desired direction before Pac-Man enters the intersection at which the turn is to be made. Thus he will turn “immediately” in accordance with the delay time of the Pac-Man electronics, and there will be no human-delay time. Obviously, if you turn the control knob prematurely, you’ll turn too early, at the wrong intersection. Even using this approach, you will inadvertently cause delays—delays which will seem instantaneous to you but which are interminable to the Pac-Man computer. Fortunately, small delays can usually be handled by the patterns described in this book. In most cases, you will know when you’re delayed by the movement of the monsters. I have included in the patterns, when appropriate, some of the more common delays, as well as advice on how to correct for them—if indeed the delays are correctable.
Uston’s patterns are broken down piece-by-piece in a very analytical way, but they tend to work pretty well—especially his meticulous 9th Key patterns. Patterns aside, Uston still had a bit of gambling on the brain when he wrote the book. On page 29 of the revised edition of Mastering Pac-Man, author Ken Uston asserts that one can potentially use the Pac-Man patterns presented in the book to hustle other players for money and that hustling Pac-Man games for $50 or $100 was a thing in “certain Las Vegas bars” at the time of the book’s publication. Later in the book, he once again discusses hustling Pac-Man by telling the player not to disclose his or her knowledge of patterns to their potential mark and advises players to vary their patterns a bit while gambling over Pac-Man. In a way, Uston may have unknowingly predicted the future of gambling: In 2017, casinos ran with the idea of gambling via Pac-Man with slot machines and a competitive version of the game called Pac-Man Battle Casino that featured betting and a four-player mode.
Compulsive gambling is fun, isn’t it?
Betting on Pac-Man Battle Casinoranges from $2-$20—depending on what the casino decides they want to require for the minimum bet. A wheel is spun to determine the winner’s payout and the game begins. Something like Bandai Namco’s Pac-Man Battle Casino makes sense in 2019, but in the early days of the Pac-Man, the legality of video-style games of skill was still being determined. But the popularity of the game, in combination with some enterprising agencies, brings us to a world where Pac-Man slot machines exist. It was only a matter of time.
“Pac-Man is, hands down, the most popular video game in history. It speaks to players of all adult ages. They remember playing Pac-Man as kids. People are just going to love it—because everyone loves Pac-Man.”
— Mike Dreitzer, president of the North American branch of Ainsworth Game Technology who released the Pac-Man Wild Edition slot machine in 2017. Per Ainsworth game development director Cody Herrick, a second slot machine--Pac-Man Dynamic—was released a year later and loaded with audio and visual references to the arcade classic.
The Cherry pattern, used in early stages. (via “How to Win at Pac-Man”).
Pac-Man patterns in black & white
The Pac-Man patterns may be established, but they’re not set in stone. Over time, numerous variations have come up and are still pursued in some online circles today. A Pac-Man pattern isn’t difficult to come up with on your own. The folks over at Pac-Maniac.com offer a reasonable three-step process for creating your own Pac-Man patterns:
A pattern should have at least three qualities that make it worthy of remembering and using. A pattern must:
1. Be easy to remember
2. Be easy to execute (no timing hesitations)
3. Gather most of the available points on the level
All patterns I post here are my own and work on the authentic Midway Pac-Man arcade game in its original, unmodified form. I don’t care for patterns that miss the “fruit” and give up those extra points. I try to stay away from reverses and never use timing hesitations. Most of all, a pattern should be fun to play.
Pac-man Slots Machine
The Apple Pattern.
The main patterns are the Cherry Pattern which covers the first stage, the Mid-Fruit Pattern for the next three stages, and the Apple Pattern that should work up until stage 16. For later stages in the game, the 5th and 9th Key pattern—when nine keys appear at the bottom of the screen—come into play, with the 9th key pattern becoming the way to finish each level from stage 25 up until the end of the game:
Variations of the 9th Key pattern come up regularly, but ultimately, it’s the pattern that will help you win the game. Just for fun, we attempted to translate some of the patterns to the NES version of the game—to varying degrees of success. The Cherry Pattern worked on the first board, while the Mid-Fruit and Apple patterns both worked for their respective stages until my poor reflexes ended the game (stages 2-4 for the former, and 5-8 for the latter). Do the 9th Key patterns work on the NES version? It’s always a possibility.
“I’ve got all the patterns down, up until the ninth key …”
Pac Man Slots On Youtube
— Buckner & Garcia, from the title track of their LP of songs about video games, Pac-Man Fever. Even the guys who wrote the song on the subject struggled with learning this important pattern, but such is the way of Pac-Man pattern play.
The record sleeve for “Pac-Man Fever” included patterns, too.
That time the phenomenon of Pac-Man branched off into unexpected territory—the pop charts
This issue of Tedium wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t discuss the equally unique cultural phenomenon of songs about Pac-Man. “Weird Al” Yankovic’s made a parody of The Beatles’ “Taxman” early in his career about the game. As is typical of Al, “Pac-Man” pays homage to the game in a humorous way, but it lacks the comedic edge of his later work. The song remained unreleased until Al’s career spanning Squeeze Box boxed set arrived in 2017—although one could find it in the archives of a certain radio show prior to the official release, if they knew where to look.
The most famous Pac-Man song, however, came from the Ohio-based duo of Jerry Buckner and Gary Garcia (known on record as Buckner & Garcia). The duo were songwriting partners who ended up with a hit and a full album of video game related songs. Later attempts at follow ups were met with indifference, but Pac-Man Fever is a true time capsule of the early 1980s that is still a fun listening experience today.
There seems to be a trend online where some writers like to mention how their song “Pac-Man Fever” hit the Billboard charts, but leaves it at that. Pac-Man Fever seems to get dismissed, as many novelty records do. But the album isn’t as bad as the hyperbole would lead you to believe. Rather, the music is well produced, catchy, and ultimately just as fun as playing the games in the arcade, circa 1983. Listening to the LP today feels more nostalgic than dated and the LP’s inner sleeve contains all of the Pac-Man patterns in full glory. Theoretically, one could listen to the record while memorizing the patterns from the sleeve and achieving a high score in the game—at least up until the 9th key, of course.
Other album tracks like “Centipede,” “Froggie’s Lament,” and “Do the Donkey Kong,” all feature stellar musical arrangements with fun and funny lyrics. The duo attempted numerous follow-ups to Pac-Man Fever, but never quite managed to gain any steam. Gary Garcia sadly passed in 2011, but the song remains an integral part of Pac-Man history—and an equally important part of pop culture history. If Pac-Man Fever isn’t exactly to your taste, you can always listen to the theme song performed in a multitude of styles instead.
The year Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph was released into theaters. The movie features a lovable Donkey Kong clone named Ralph who longs for more in his world of the arcade—and jumps into a racing game to find it. Pac-Man appears in one scene of the film and we never see or hear anything about patterns, but there’s a broader connection to “Pac-Man Fever” in the film: the movie’s theme song. Buckner & Garcia were responsible for writing and performing the catchy tune, harkening back to the glory days of Pac-Man Fever.
People like to spend a great deal of time thinking about Pac-Man these days.
In Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel Ready Player One, a perfect game of Pac-Man is an integral part of the story’s conclusion. While the fictional version of Billy Mitchell’s victory made a dent in pop culture, things get a bit more interesting in real life. Sometimes it leads to a bizarre interpretation of the game’s central themes, but the legacy of Pac-Man extends beyond high scores. The game did wonders for igniting interest in the world of video games on both the pop culture and development ends of the spectrum.
Per Gamasutra, the creator of Pac-Man intended the game to appeal to women. And it did; Pac-Man not only saw more women to play arcade games, but it helped to encourage more women to pursue game development in the future.
The game is still incredibly popular and can be found just about everywhere. The ability of a little yellow arcade game character to transcend its status as a mere game and fuel the imaginations of players for almost four decades is a remarkable feat—one rarely accomplished by any character. And what about those patterns? Variations of them are still being developed today. Not bad for a simple arcade game with a heart of gold.
Alexander Pac Man Slots
--
Find this one an interesting read? Share it with a pal! And thanks to Lemonade for sponsoring.
Ainsworth continues its winning slot series based on the most popular arcade game of all time with PAC-MAN DYNAMIC EDITION
By Frank Legato
When slot manufacturer Ainsworth Game Technology first announced its partnership with arcade game producer Bandai Namco Entertainment to bring the arcade classic PAC-MAN to the slot floor, many were excited to see the iconic arcade game on the slot floor, affording folks who loved gobbling pac-dots and avoiding ghosts to experience the game on a casino floor.
The advent of skill-based games on the slot floor has, in fact, been dubious at best, and Ainsworth has kept its focus on making traditional slot machines, and in the case of licensed themes such as this, it’s all about mining the various features of a theme and transforming them into good gambles.
In the case of PAC-MAN, it’s hard to imagine a theme with a richer collection of features that easily translate to the slot floor, starting with PAC-MAN himself—a video critter shaped like a pizza with a slice missing, running around a video maze gobbling digital dots—and continuing with Pac-Man’s nemeses, the four ghosts named Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde, which, if they catch Pac-Man enough times, prompt the dreaded “Game Over” message, along with that deflating end-game digital music.
Ainsworth, in fact, has already successfully mined this rich vein of sounds and images. PAC-MAN WILD EDITION, released last spring, has been a roaring success, still popular with players wherever it has been placed. Distinguishing that game is not only the multiple progressive jackpots, but an extra row of reel symbols above the main reel array. When PAC-MAN appears on that extra row, he drops down to make every symbol on the corresponding main reel wild. This month, players will be treated to what promises to be the first of many sequels to the iconic brand, PAC-MAN DYNAMIC EDITION.
Like PAC-MAN WILD EDITION, the new game is featured on Ainsworth’s A640 cabinet, featuring a high-definition, 40-inch vertical touch-screen video monitor, a 5.1 surround-sound system and a touch-screen button deck. The game itself is a five-reel, 30-line video slot which, like its predecessor, includes an extra row of reels above the main three-row, five-reel array.
From there, the idea was to produce a different but equally compelling way to use the extra row of symbols, says Cody Herrick, director of game development for Ainsworth. “What we’ve changed up in Dynamic is that, instead of getting those drop-down wilds, you get a PAC-MAN symbol that’s going to correspond to the three-by-five reel below it,” Herrick says. Planet moolah slots online, free. “And anywhere a ghost appears on that reel, a blue Pac-Man is going to come through and eat those up, and you’re given a multiplier depending on how many of those ghosts have appeared on the screen.”
During base-game spins, the number of ghosts gobbled up by Pac-Man translates into multipliers applied to the total bet. “This occurs quite regularly,” Herrick says.
This feature is super-charged during a unique free-games feature. Three or more bonus symbols scattered on the reels trigger eight free games. Before the free games start, the bottom reel array expands from three rows of symbols to nine, tripling the number of pay lines. During the free-spins, the extra top row includes only PAC-MAN and “Pattern” symbols. When PAC-MAN lands on the extra reel row, ghosts Blinky, Inky, Pinky and Clyde are transformed into “Ghost Prize” symbols on the main reels.
The player is awarded a bonus prize of the total credits bet multiplied by the number of Ghost Prize symbols appearing. “Changing the reel array to a nine-by-five creates a huge stack of these symbols coming across, and you’re going to get big stacks of the ghosts as well,” Herrick says. “So, you’re going to get 25, 30, 35 times your bet when that PAC-MAN shows up on the extra reel.” Three or more bonus scatter symbols on a free spin trigger an additional five free games.
Multipliers also are prevalent in a spinning bonus called the Mega Roulette feature. When a “Key” symbol appears on the extra reel, a roulette wheel appears on the screen. The player spins the wheel for prizes of the total bet multiplied by two, three, five, 10, 15, 20 or 50. The other slice of the roulette wheel is the “Jackpot Game,” which guarantees one of the three progressive prizes.
In the jackpot Game, the screen displays nine blue ghosts, each hiding a “Mini, Minor” or “Major” jackpot icon. The player selects ghosts until matching three jackpot icons. The Mini resets at $50; the Minor at $400. The Major resets at $4,000.
Ainsworth has not only translated aspects of the classic PAC-MAN game for the slot game, but has adeptly recreated the feel of the arcade game. “PAC-MAN DYNAMIC EDITION is really a partnership with Bandai Namco, following their art and animation with PAC-MAN, the ghosts and the chase sequences,” Herrick says. “But we’ve used the audio as well. One of the cool ‘Easter eggs’ in the game is that, as you’re getting lower and lower on the free spins, the music speeds up—just as it does in the arcade game when you have fewer and fewer pellets to eat.”
PAC-MAN DYNAMIC EDITION was launched in late December and will be in most jurisdictions in early 2018. “The original PAC-MAN game is still doing extremely well, and we feel Dynamic is going to fit right in behind that,” says Herrick, “and we’ll continue our partnership with Bandai Namco with more titles down the road.”
He adds that a skill-based version of PAC-MAN is not out of the question, once the market proves that players will in fact embrace skill gaming. But for now, he says, players can enjoy all those multipliers in Dynamic Edition. “When you hit those giant stacks of ghosts and get 35 times your bet on a single spin, it’s a great win; then two spins later, you do it again,” Herrick says. “The frequency of this feature is what will really astound players.”
Astounding, yes, but at its core — a lot of fun.
Slot Type: Five-reel, 30-line video slot; three-level progressive jackpot; wheel-based, free-spin and picking bonus events; penny through $10 denominations Payback % Range: 90%-95% Average Hit Frequency: Approximately 50% Top jackpot: Progressive; $4,000 reset |