There's a good summary of the legal issues surrounding Ms. Pac-Man here: <a href="https://pacman.fandom.com/wiki/History_of_Ms._Pac-Man_legal_issues" rel="nofollow">https://pacman.fandom.com/wiki/History_of_Ms._Pac-Man_legal_...</a> .<p>Essentially, the game was originally created as an unofficial upgrade to Pac-Man arcade games by a third party, GCC. GCC then licensed Ms. Pac-Man to Namco, with a contract stipulating that they were due royalties for any Ms. Pac-Man coin operated games, as well as any electronic distribution of Ms. Pac-Man. Namco then forgot about the contract after Ms. Pac-Man went out of production in the mid-80s, meaning that the extremely broad "electronic distribution" term was never renegotiated.<p>In the early 2000s, Namco started releasing Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga multigame cabinets without paying GCC's successors royalties, so they sued Namco. The arbitrator decided that "coin operated game" meant that GCC's successors were due royalties from any Ms. Pac-Man machine with a coin slot, but not machines without coin slots meant for home use. More importantly, they decided that because the contract defined "electronic distribution" as "any use in which the game is broadcast or in any other way transmitted to other receiving devices", this meant that GCC's successors were due royalites for rereleases of Ms. Pac-Man on any device with internet connectivity.<p>Around 2018, Namco reached out to GCC's successors in an attempt to buy out their royalty rights. Before negotiations completed, AtGames, a company that mostly focuses on rereleasing old games, significantly outbid Namco. Namco contacted AtGames saying that if AtGames didn't rescind their offer, Namco would permanently stop licensing their titles to AtGames and ensure that "there is zero income stream delivered pursuant [to the GCC] agreement".<p>Since that point, the only new Ms. Pac-Man rereleases have been standalone games that fall under the "not coin operated" loophole. In 2022, they delisted most existing Ms. Pac-Man rereleases, likely to cut AtGames off from receiving any Ms. Pac-Man royalties at all. Additionally, Namco has started editing the Ms. Pac-Man character out of rereleases of other Pac-Man games in favor of a new "Pac-Mom" character (likely as an attempt to reduce awareness of Ms. Pac-Man to further devalue AtGames's purchase).
As much as I've never heard of, don't care about, and had no particular trust in the "Pac-Man Museum+" videogame, I am nonetheless disappointed in them for altering their history without credit or footnote. I expect more from Museum-branded shovelware.
Huh. I feel like a Ms Pac-Man/Galaga multigame in the corner of a laundromat or restaurant is really the most common way for anyone to run into Pac-Man now, and yet here's Namco trying to retcon her out of existence.
A few years ago I made a pac-man clone with unity for android where the only difference was that you controled Pac-man with your left thumb and Ms Pac-man with your right thumb, called Pac-men if I recall correctly, it was a bit frustating but the innovative mechanics was a bit of fun by itself, both could eat ghost when powered-up, the ghosts movement logic was the classic one too (so it only took into account one the first pac-man to chose paths), not much later it was taken down from the play store for trademark infrigement, in my naiveness I assumed nobody care about such thing due beign such an old game and forgot to check beforehand, boy was I wrong. I considered changed the sprites and release again with a different name/ip but lazyness took the best of me, probably wouldn't have catched anybodys atentton with some other name anyway.
I never noticed that none of the official art for Ms. Pac-Man includes her beauty mark, which is kinda key to the sprite. It's the only thing that distinguishes her from regular Pac-Man other than the bow.
In the words of one Johnny Blue Jeans...<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqZo3pC6h68" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqZo3pC6h68</a>
My favorite variant is probably Pac-Gal [1] (a hack from 1981, sometimes also attributed Uchida, 1982) – it doesn't get more '80s than this.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.gamesdatabase.org/game/arcade/pac-gal" rel="nofollow">https://www.gamesdatabase.org/game/arcade/pac-gal</a>
It's a shame really that Namco didn't want to pay a lot of money for the rights of Ms Pac Man.<p>I don't understand their approach.<p>They clearly have a lot more money in their disposal than AtGames. Why not buy the second most significant character in the Pacman franchise?
> After all, this would be like if Nintendo re-released a Super Mario game and swapped out Princess Peach for a Princess Pineapple or Princess Pumpkin and just acted like it wasn’t weird.<p>Yeah, that'd be weird, but swapping Princess Peach for Princess Toadstool was fine?