Tuesday, January 24, 2012

It's about Pucking Time! The Pac-Man Cartoon Finally Gets a DVD Release

Geez Namco and Warners, ever hear of the expression 'While I'm Young?" Never has a DVD release fitted that expression more. (And failed to do so, as most fans are now in their mid 30s if not older.) It was one of my favorite TV shows when I was a little tot. It was a sad day when it vanished from the airways. Only the Christmas Special appeared on TV from time to time. In Canada it has never been rerun. It was through E-bay that I was able to watch it again in my early 20s. That's a long time to wait, let me tell you. All my bitterness of dealing with torrents and bootlegs for a decade aside, it will be very nice to get an official release DVD of the Pac-Man cartoon.
I always thought it stands up pretty good, compared to a lot of other shows. Their is a lot of stories by Jeffry Scott and the voice acting is pretty top notch. The ghosts in particular are really great characters. The second season even includes Lorenzo Music, voice of Garfield, as Super Pac. I hope this isn't another hoax like last 2010s announcement. It all looks official, as the DVD is now available for pre-order on AMAZON. There is no release date yet, so that worries me a bit. I have seen it set for January 31st, but Amazon has no date listed. If you live in the States you can save yourself some money and get it directly from Warners.


Man, Pac-man was such a huge influence on me as a child. I lived and breathed that game! How bad was it? Well, take a look above...see the wall paper? That was on my wall till I was 18! Oh that was a sad day when we took it down. u__u


The release of Pac-Man on DVD is gonna be better then a kiss from Ms. Pac!

It's a pretty good month for Pac-Man fans. The wonderful Game Boy version of Lock'N Chase was released for Nintendo 3DS. (And Dsi?) The game holds a ton of memories for me from early high school. Many a winters night was spent cuddling and playing that game. :) Lock'N Chase is a Pac-Man clone where you play a thief named Lupin. Lupin Pac-Man doesn't avoid ghosts, but cops. In the Game Boy game they were given different looks and personalities. One looks like a gay biker cop! :P For $3.00 it's really worth the download. I really liked this release, cause by trying to play it with emulator on my DS, the game was robbed of sound. That made it pretty unplayable.

It's a kinda funny how they avoided making Lupin look like Pac-Man at the start, by having him red and square. Then they slowly made him look more and more like Pac-Man. By the time the 1990 game was released they said "fuck it!" and he was yellow with a huge mouth. Even the US release isn't too subtle about it. The cops are all dark blue, like scared ghost monsters.


Unlike Pac-Man, Lock'N Chase had an ending. It also had a 'special world' that unlike Mario 3D Land didn't reuse the same levels and make them harder, it had new mazes. ;P

All this news of Pac-Man on DVD started with me finding these old Donkey Kong Bootleg stickers online. Remember when you could find so many different puffy bootleg stickers in variety stores and stuff? Ah, the good old days.
You just don't see that anymore. Sure you find some stuff in where they do flat stickers with official art in China Towns, but it's not the same as when you find puffy stickers like this. Stickers were someone has done their own interpretation, or just a neat cheap knock off. There's some cool Star Wars ones out there too, that are easy to find. I don't think I have seen these Donkey Kong ones before. Of course corporations are pretty happy about these pretty much vanishing I am sure.
Here's hoping Season 2 with Super Pac-Man won't be far behind.

4 comments:

  1. Also watched this as a kid. They had reruns on the "USA" channel (USA Express, when it showed kid cartoons) and I loved it.

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  2. That is where most of the bootlegs came from as well! :) I wish we had that channel here. Even our Teletoon Retro doesn't play Pac-Man. They play LIVE ACTION Batman instead. >__<

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  3. Cool but kinda late but on DVD that cool did they remastered it or just compilation? - FallenAngel

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  4. Yeah it's kinda late. Maybe this should be Bluray. XD I am not sure if they remastered it. I would hope so. From what I read, they have added everything to it, including the Pac-Mania bumpers, many of which have been missing for years.

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