Before and After Pac-Man

Note: I have this blog posted on screwattack.com under the name MisterBo, so if this looks familiar that's probably why. If you want to see blog posts before I post them on blog spot, they will be on screwattack.com.

Considerably one of the best arcade game of all time and one of the worst atari 2600 games of all time, Pac-Man has left a huge impression on the video game world and will probably have the largest chapter in the big book of video game history.

Before:
In 1955, the company of Nakamura Manufacturing was founded in Tokyo, Japan by Mayasa Nakamura. In 1958, the company had a slight name change to Nakamura Facturing Co. which would later be shortened to Namco. In 1970, the company produced a coin-op mechanical simulator called Racer. Atari Japan, a Tokyo based division of Atari, was struggling financially in 1974. Nakamura struck a deal with Nolan Bushnell allowing Namco to buy out the company for 500,000 dollars. Namco ended up inheriting all the debts Atari Japan had, but were able to distribute Atari games for ten years. Because of this deal, Namco opened up a series of arcades with Atari games. In 1978 Namco produced its first original video game, Gee Bee.


"It looks like pinball on crack."

In 1979, Namco revolutionized the video game industry by producing the first video game with RBG color graphics and that game was Galaxian.


"Isn't Galaga, I mean, Galaxian a great game?"

Also in 1979, young Namco employee, Toru Iwatani, was to develop a game over the course of the year. While at a American pizza restaurant, Iwatani was inspired by a missing pizza slice and the Japanese slang phrase paku-paku taberu (paku-paku describes the sound of a mouth opening and closing in succession) to create a character and Pac-Man was born.


"If the dots are pills, does that mean Pac-Man's a junkie?"

After:
The game was originally released in Japan under the name Puck Man in 1980. The game got a lukewarm response due to more popular games such as Space Invaders.


- Captain, we're losing ships, what should we do?
- Drop down, increase speed, REVERSE DIRECTION!!!

Later that year, Bally of Midway manufactured the game under the altered title Pac-Man thinking that vandals would change the P in Puck Man to an F making it "Fuck Man".


"Puck Man sure likes gobbling balls."

The game was a huge success bringing in lots of revenue and creating lots of popularity. It was so good it had a top 40 song named after it called "Pac-Man Fever."

"Video Gamers rejoice!"

The game went on to sell over 350,000 units becoming one of the top selling arcade games of all time. Originally a bootlegged game called Crazy Otto, Ms. Pac-Man was the unofficial sequel to Pac-Man produced by Midway. The game was the original Pac-Man game, but with improvements. This game was also a huge success becoming one of the highest selling arcade games of all time.

"Insert ball joke here."

There are many ports of Pac-Man, but only one I want to talk about. Pac-Man for the Atari 2600, the biggest mistake in video game history. Atari got the rights to produce a port for Pac-Man in the late 1970's. They thought it would be easy to produce the game thinking the game was popular because of it's gameplay and not graphics. They had a prototype ready by late 1981, but to capitalize on the game for the 1981 holiday season, they decided to release the prototype. At the time, there were only 10 million active Atari 2600's being used, but Atari made 12 million copies of the game thinking every Atari 2600 owner would buy the game and 2 million people would buy the system just to play the game with predicted sales to be 500 million dollars. The game only sold 5 million copies leaving 7 million leftover. The game was awful and is often blamed along with E.T. The Extra Terrestrial for the video game crash of 1983."

"Shame! SHAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Before and After Sonic the Hedgehog

Note: I have this blog posted on screwattack.com under the name MisterBo, so if this looks famliar that's probably why. If you want to see blog posts before I post them on blog spot, they will be on screwattack.com.


Before:
In 1940, a company known as Standard Games (later named Service Games) was founded in Honolulu, Hawaii to provide coin-op games for American servicemen to provide entertainment. In 1951 the company moved to Japan and in 1952 Service Games of Japan was registered. In 1954, Rosen Enterprises was founded to export art. The company later found popularity in instant photo booths that they imported, so the company also decided to import coin-op mechanical games. In 1965, Rosen Enterprises and Service Games merged to form Sega Enterprises. One of the first games Sega produced was a submarine simulator called Periscope.

"It's better than playing with shit."

The game was a huge hit worldwide. As the company continued to prosper, it was bought by Gulf+Western. One of Sega's more popular video arcade was Zaxxon which was the first game to use axonmetric projection.

"Why is there a plane on my motherboard?"

In 1983, Sega made it's first home console, the SG-1000, but the system was only available in Japan and Australia.

"Damn Aussies."

Also in 1983, Sega produced the first ever 3D arcade game SubRoc-3D.

"It looks like someone threw up on the game."

The same year Sega produced the first ever laserdisc game, Astron Belt.

"EXPLOSIONS!"

Sega was a very successful company, but ended up as one of the victims of the video game crash and was bought out in 1984 by CSK and had its new headquarters in Japan. In 1986 Sega of America released the Sega Master System. Even though the Sega Master System was superior to the NES, it didn't appeal to the American mass market. The unofficial mascot for Sega was Alex Kidd who's first game was Alex Kidd in Miracle World.

"Did his hand get stung by a bee?"

In 1989, Sega released the Sega Genesis or Mega Drive.

"It's sound system sounds like someone taking a shit on a funk album."

The company used an anti-Nintendo campaign to promote the console.

"Genesis does what Nintendon't until 1991."

In 1991, Nintendo released the Super Nintendo, a far more superior console to the Sega Genesis. This caused Sega to change it's slogan to "Welcome to the next level". In the same year Sega decided they needed a new mascot that needed to be "cooler" than Mario. Sega came up with a mascot and that mascot was Sonic the Hedgehog.

"He looked so different back then."

After:
Originally the Sonic we know today was very different than the Sonic that was first planned. Originally Sonic was to be in a band as the lead singer and would be featured in a sound test screen of Sonic the Hedgehog. In addition, Sonic was to have a human girlfriend and fangs, but once the game was given to Sega of America they got rid of all that stuff.

"This makes no sense."

The game was released for the Sega Master System and the Sega Genesis and were extremely popular. The game was later packaged with the Sega Genesis to promote their new mascot. Sonic the Hedgehog featured graphics revolutionary for its time and allowed the player to travel very quickly across the map.

"Before that annoying prick Tails follows you around."

The main point of the Sonic the Hedgehog is to collect the six Chaos Emeralds to prevent Dr. Robotnik from getting them. Each zone has its own chaos emerald until the final zone and at the end of each zone you had to fight a big machine built by Dr. Robotnik with Dr. Robotnik controlling it.

"Look out, its a giant ball!"
"That's what she said."

Sonic the Hedgehog later had a sequal released, Sonic the hedgehog 2. The game features a new playable character, Tails, but who wants to play as him. The main point of the game is to collect the seven Chaos Emerals from the eleven different zones in the game. As you play you will always have Tails follow you and if you manage to finally lose him he'll fly back to you for he's invincible. I have nightmares about him. Once all the emeralds are collected, you go Super Sonic and fly off to the Death Egg to defeat Dr. Robotnik.

"No Tails! I don't want you to see me this way."

The sequal to Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is Sonic the Hedgehog 3. This game is the first game to feature Knuckles. The main point of the game is to progress through the six levels, but in order to fully complete the game you must collect the seven Chaos Emeralds. There is an expansion pack that allows you to play as Knuckles in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and 3 and allows you to explore new areas.

"Who wouldn't play as Knuckles?"

Sega continued to make systems after the Sega Genesis, but they were rushed in order to compete with othe newer systems. They first produced add-ons to the Sega Genesis such as the Sega-CD and 32X, but the games for the system got poor reviews and the add-ons themselves were too damn expensive.

"The video game equivalent to Frankenstein's monster."

Also, the Sega Saturn had the same problems the Sega-CD and 32X had by having crappy games and also the graphics failed in comparison to its competitors such as the PlayStation and Nintendo 64.

"At least its not an Atari Jaguar."

Sega did make a comeback with the Dreamcast, but fans of Sega lost hope of Sega redeeming themselves and the release of the PlayStation 2 didn't help either. Even though the system had good games, low sales caused Sega to discontinue the Dreamcast two years after its release in the US.

" Sega Dreamcast RIP 1999-2001"

Since then, Sega has not produced any new systems, but has remained a 3rd party gaming company producing games for the Wii, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. In recent years, there have been a slew of Sonic games that have been crappy, but there is hope. There has been the announcement of Sonic the Hedgehog 4 and is a throwback edition in the Sonic series and is expected to save the series. Also, compared to the original Sonic the Hedgehog the graphic are way more improved to show how far the series has come.

"Finally! At least he doesn't turn into a werewolf or has a sword."

Before and After Pong

Note: I have this blog posted on screwattack.com under the name MisterBo, so if this looks farmliar that's probably why. If you want to see blog posts before I post them on blog spot, they will be on screwattack.com.

Just to be clear, I'm not talking about Pong for the Atari 2600 or Pong for the Odyssey so don't get your shit tied up in a fucking knot okay! I'm talking about that iconic Atari arcade Pong.

Before:
Before Pong even existed or even before Atari was a company, there was an analog computer called the NIMROD *giggle, giggle* that used an oscilloscope as a display to play games such as Tennis For Two.

"Imagine what people thought

of this when they first saw it."

Also on this computer, there was a game called Spacewar! that was featured on later computers. This game inspired a young Nolan Bushnell to form the company Syzygy with Ted Dabney to produce the Spacewar! clone Computer Space.

"Wow! Ain't she something!"

Unfortunately the game was a commercial failure even though it made 3 million dollars. What the Fuck! It was 1971, how was 3 million dollars a commercial failure back then! Anyway, the name of the company, Syzygy, was later changed to Atari after finding out the company name was already being used by a Mendocino hippie commune's candle company. I don't even know what the fuck that is, but it sure doesn't sound important. After finally getting the company's first office in Sunnyvale, California, Nolan Bushnell attended a demonstration for the Magnavox Oddysey and he was impressed by the tennis game made for the system. He later got the idea to produce a coin-op version of the game and Pong was born!

"Ta da!"

After:
Now, at this point you probably are thinking to yourself, "Wow! Nolan Bushnell has no creativity." And for that, I shit on your front lawn because you have forgotten what happened after Pong. The game was a huge success putting the company on the map. Atari later released other coin-op versions of the game a home pong console and the Atari 2600. Other companies thought the pong console was a great idea so many companies produced their own versions, including Nintendo. This can be better explained by the Angry Video Game Nerd at this link, http://www.gametrailers.com/video/angry-video-screwattack/62615.
The Atari 2600 was also a huge success selling 30 million units. Unfortunately, many companies produced games for the system without Atari's approval and games approved for the console were usually as good as eating shit. The two most imfamous games for the system were E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and Pac-Man.

"It's just so awful!"

Those games are frequently blamed for the video game crash of the early 80's. Just to demonstrate how bad this was for Atari, the company went from making 2 billion dollars in 1982 to being sold off in three sections in 1984 because nobody wanted to buy the whole company.

"This was so bad, I couldn't find a picture of Atari's revenue at the time. It must all be buried somewhere in the desert."

Even though Atari failed as a company Pong still has popularity in the video game industry today. The most common version of Pong today would be the tennis game in Wii Sports for the Wii.

"Different point system, but basically the same game."

There are many other games that are like Pong like Mario Tennis for the Virtual Boy, Mario Tennis 64 for the Nintendo 64, and just Tennis for the NES, but the Wii Sports versions is the best version. Also, in Tennis for the NES, Mario's in that game too as the referee.

"Told ya so!"