Pac-Land (NES)

Pac-Land
Developer: Namco Publisher: Namco Platform: NES Released internationally: June 18, 2020 (Namco Museum Archives Vol. 2) Released in JP: November 21, 1985 This game has hidden developer credits. This game has unused graphics. This game has a Data Crystal page

Pac-Land is a fairly generic early sidescroller, except for Pac-Man. The Famicom version is a significant downgrade from the Arcade original, most noticeably in the graphics department.

Unused Graphics

Unused graphics of the Ghosts in cars. In all places where they would appear in the arcade original, there are ghosts in planes instead.

Ghosts in double-decker cars. The top-left corner of the sprite was overwritten.

A more masculine-looking fairy.

Developer Credits

Namco games often contain some generic copyright and/or credits text at the very beginning of their ROMs. This one contains the following text:

COPY RIGHT 1984 1985 NAMCO LTD,ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Additionally, the name "MR HIROKI AOYAGI" is loaded into RAM at address $52, in order to distinguish between soft and hard resets.

Oddities

The game features a somewhat nontraditional control scheme by default, with A and B moving Pac-Man left and right, and the D-Pad jumping. The game actually has a standard control method, which is accessed by using the Player 2 controller (although you're stuck without a pause function, since the Famicom's 2P controller doesn't have one).