By Craig Pearson on January 14th, 2013 at 4:00 pm.
There are many things that Not Pac-Man isn’t. It’s not, for example, the Cuban missile crisis. It’s also not a car. It’s definitely not the Higgs-Boson particle. And I can’t begin to tell you how much it’s not a delicious, multi-tiered birthday cake with “Craig Is Best And Handsomest And Smells Lovely” written on it. So what I want to know is why it claims to not to be the one thing it most closely resembles? Pretentious Pac-Man.
Your eyes will definitely agree with me it *looks* an awful lot like Pac-Man. You might even sing to yourself “It’s starting to look a lot like Pac-Man”, and you would be correct. This is Pac-Man, Excact-Man, Copy-Cat-Man, but with one major difference: you move the screen instead of directly directing the little pie. You tilt the world and watch Pac-Man and his ectoplasmic enemies swirl around, bouncing all over (as the site puts it: “because of physics”). It turns the game around, removing the tension and replacing it with silly, giddy lurches in direction. This is what puts the “Not” in the title. It has all the visual and aural elements, and you still have the same goal, it’s just the control scheme is completely different.
The best bit is the control schemes. Keyboard? yup. Mouse? Hells yeah! Joypad? *fistbump* Joystick? Man, you know you’re stuff. Steering wheel? All of the yes. That last one is the reason the game exists, by the way. I sadly don’t have one to test it out, and I suspect most people won’t. If you do, and you want try a fun reworking of a classic, then you have my permission.
Ta very much, Indiegames.
14/01/2013 at 16:06 CountVlad says:
“Bose-Higson” – Isn’t it Higgs-Bosun or am I missing a joke here?
14/01/2013 at 16:08 Koozer says:
“It’s definitely not the Bose-Higson particle.” Well, it’s true!
14/01/2013 at 16:10 Craig Pearson says:
How the hell… I’m blaming autocorrect, as I’ve never heard of the other one either.
15/01/2013 at 01:50 marshabilly5 says:
til I saw the receipt of $5398, I did not believe that my mother in law woz really bringing home money parttime online.. there aunt has been doing this 4 only 21 months and a short time ago repaid the loans on their mini mansion and purchased a great new Mercedes-Benz S-class. we looked here..Job Creation
14/01/2013 at 17:21 Hoaxfish says:
maybe it’s not Bose headphones
14/01/2013 at 16:13 Hodge says:
The name we’re all chasing is Higgs boson.
EDIT: And I see that Craig’s already corrected it. Never mind :).
14/01/2013 at 16:15 Zunt says:
Amusingly, bosons are named after the physicist Satyendra Nath Bose.
14/01/2013 at 16:42 brulleks says:
Maybe this other one was theorized after he worked with Charlie Higson?
14/01/2013 at 17:16 sweetjer says:
I have one last correction for you, Craig. At the end you say “man you know you’re stuff” and it’s true, I do know that I am made of stuff. But surely you meant that I know some relevant stuff, which may also be true but is rather presumptuous since you provided minimal evidence to support said claim.
14/01/2013 at 18:17 pepper says:
I call it highly anecdotal evidence at best, I fear you would not pass any peer-examination craig. I hate to rain on your parade, but well. There you go!
14/01/2013 at 16:15 yogibbear says:
Wouldn’t this work on a tablet with a gyro kind of like those old wooden board things for kids with marbles in them and little holes to drop through?
14/01/2013 at 16:18 luukdeman111 says:
“So what I want to know is why it claims to be the one thing it most closely resembles? Pretentious Pac-Man.”
Shouldn’t that be: “why it claims NOT to be the one thing it most closely resembles?”
Edit: Alright, craig…. You’re getting there… just read that sentence over one more time and fix the last bugs…. Also happy birthday!
14/01/2013 at 16:34 Craig Pearson says:
Eesh! Failpost.
14/01/2013 at 16:26 Hodge says:
This is basically Bob’s Bad Day. Which is by no means a bad thing.
14/01/2013 at 16:27 Chalky says:
That video makes me so dizzy, I’m not sure I could actually play this game
14/01/2013 at 16:29 Jim9137 says:
Go home Pac-Man, you are drunk.
14/01/2013 at 16:42 MOKKA says:
While mentioning this, I think it’s also worth pointing people towards Not Tetris:
http://stabyourself.net/nottetris2/
14/01/2013 at 16:50 LionsPhil says:
oh god the horror
14/01/2013 at 17:24 Hoaxfish says:
It’s not Not the Nine o’Clock News either.
14/01/2013 at 18:19 pepper says:
I one up you:
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/hell.png
and the playable version:
http://www.geekosystem.com/xkcd-tetris-hell-game/
14/01/2013 at 22:22 gwathdring says:
http://twinbeardstudios.com/140_futilitris
From the team that brought you Frog Fractions, here is Futilitris!
14/01/2013 at 17:00 wodin says:
Funny how many of the Pac man generation once abit older went to dark clubs listening to electronic music whilst eating pills..me being one of them..
14/01/2013 at 20:52 Paul B says:
And here we are having debates whether games cause violence, when Pac-Man subconsciously influenced a generation of pill-poppers at “Rave” parties. Ban this filth NOW (…argh too late)!
14/01/2013 at 17:35 Ecto says:
“Joystick? Man, you know you’re stuff.”
Whoops.
15/01/2013 at 12:56 Tom Walker says:
But I really do know I’m stuff. Would you try to deny it?
14/01/2013 at 18:22 jeanjoan421 says:
If you think Paula`s story is neat,, last munth my mum’s best friend also broght in $9346 workin 10 hours a week in their apartment and there roomate’s aunt`s neighbour has been doing this for 7-months and got a cheque for over $9346 in their spare time on- line. use the instructions from this website… http://www.bit90.com
15/01/2013 at 07:32 TechnicalBen says:
And there I was hoping this was something pretentious, like pacman just sitting there or flying off randomly, so I could gloat. This looks much better though!
15/01/2013 at 09:32 hamburger_cheesedoodle says:
High score initials in the video: MLGPRO. My kind of demonstration.