Professor Pac-Man (Arcade Review)

Happy birthday Professor Pac-Man! Tomorrow, August 12, 2023, the game turns forty years old! I know I just said that about Jr. Pac-Man, but the two games came out on consecutive days in the summer of 1983. And wow, if you thought Jr. Pac-Man got a historically raw deal, it’s nothing compared to Professor Pac-Man. This was a massive arcade flop and such a disaster that, of the 400 units Bally Midway manufactured, over 300 were returned. It’s rumored that, when Namco started development of Pac-Land, Midway/Bally asked if they could make it compatible with the returned Professor Pac-Man cabinets, even though they had no joysticks and only two pairs of three buttons. With all those returned units, that means less than 100 units of Professor Pac-Man remain out there somewhere. It’s been forty years. You have to figure around.. what? About half of them broke and were junked, or repurposed without being returned? Forty years is a long time. Six years older than me. I bet half of the 100 survivors were destroyed. Ouch. It’s also the only arcade Pac-Man that never sniffed a home release, or at least the only one that doesn’t have a pinball-shaped tumor growing out of it. It didn’t even get ported to computers, and home computers loved educational games in the 80s. Professor Pac-Man has gone down as something of a joke, even to fans of Pac-Man. And I don’t get why.

“Wait.. Cathy.. did you say EDUCATIONAL GAME?”

Yea, this flashes on the screen when you get a correct answer. It’s quite the eyesore. THANKFULLY, the rest of the game has shockingly beautiful graphics for the era. Probably some 8 bit pixel artwork of the early-to-mid 80s. Yes, really!

I suppose in 1983 this would be labeled more of a “trivia game” which was much more common back in the day. There’s a Trivial Pursuit arcade game. There’s a Name That Tune arcade game with graphics modeled after the 1984 version of the famous game show. I tried them. They suck. Professor Pac-Man or Capcom’s Quiz & Dragons are probably the best arcade trivia games, and honestly, I prefer Professor Pac-Man. However, it’s not really trivia, either. Today, a game like this would be called a “brain training” game. While, yes, it’s set up as a multiple choice “quiz” experience, the questions are brain teasers, not general knowledge. Professor Pac-Man feels exactly like the type of game that would have been a massive, million-selling mega hit on the Nintendo DS in the mid-2000s. I can see you rolling your eyes. Well, I added up the sales for the top “educational” or “brain training” type of games on the DS, and they combined for over 60 million units. Now, look at these screenshots, and other shots in this review.

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Does Professor Pac-Man really seem that different compared to games like Nintendo’s Brain Age or especially Big Brain Academy? Because, the three games from those franchises sold for a combined forty million units by themselves, and that’s just on the Nintendo DS. When you see those numbers, and then experience the actual gameplay of Professor Pac-Man and not just hear about its scathing reputation, you can’t but wonder if it was ahead of its time. In Professor Pac-Man, you’re given some kind of visual question with three possible answers. The faster you answer, the more points you get. Miss too many times and it’s game over.

The graphics are pretty well detailed for a 1983 game. Nice and colorful. Very underrated presentation does Professor Pac-Man have.

People crap all over Professor Pac-Man, and I don’t get it at all. I’m going to assume they just never played it. Because, not only are the questions are genuinely fun to answer, but they offer a satisfying challenge as well. Plus, it’s not like this is some kind of no-frills, bare bones quiz. The graphics are bright, detailed enough for some complex questions, and the game is loaded with personality. Correct answers (and wrong ones as well) always include playful animations. I hate to keep going back to Big Brain Academy, but Professor Pac-Man and it feel like they share some DNA. Of course, this sold 400 units, 300 of which were returned. Big Brain Academy sold over ten million units combined. Six million units on DS, three-and-a-half million on Wii, and another two million for Switch. Proof positive that pioneers get slaughtered while the settlers prosper.

Like Big Brain Academy, this also works pretty dang well as a multiplayer game. Well, as long as one of you doesn’t game over too quickly. Oh, and add the numbers 304 to the start for peak immaturity. You’re welcome.

The word “underrated” doesn’t quite feel strong enough for this release. Professor Pac-Man.. historically vilified, laughing stock of the Pac-Man franchise Professor M. F.’n Pac-Man, is, on the down-low, a very good video game. If you’re into this sort of thing, at least. If the Brain Age or Big Brain or Professor Layton type of stuff didn’t float your boat, nothing here will appeal to you. But, if you’re a fan of any of those, I think you’ll really dig what the Professor offers. There’s a massive variety of questions AND question types. Sometimes you’re tying to determine which object is the mirror image of another. Sometimes you have to observe a scene closely and then answer a question related to it. There’s allegedly over 500 questions, and I have no idea if the game mixes up the order of the multiple choices.

If some of these seem too simple, remember, there’s a timer going too.

Now, Professor Pac-Man does has a couple issues. The biggest one is that the timer starts too quickly. Perfect scores aren’t even possible without blind luck via stabbing one of the three buttons because the timer starts as soon as the answers appear. Since so much of Professor Pac-Man requires visually studying a subject and the choices, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to give players at least a second or two. There’s also the occasional issue with animations that require counting objects (a juggler, for example) going too fast, though I’ll concede that might have been an issue with my emulator. On the other hand, Professor Pac-Man is overflowing with personality. It really reminds me of some of the old educational games for the Apple II my pops or AJ would show me with too much enthusiasm.

After so many rounds, a double-the-points question is asked. Some of them are pretty dang hard, and you don’t get a second chance if you miss.

And that’s Professor Pac-Man. Whether this belonged in arcades in the cocaine-fueled early 80s or not is irrelevant today, since this wouldn’t be in arcades. I have no clue on its current status or who owns the rights, except to say I think it’s a long shot at best that it’ll ever see an official re-release. That just makes me really depressed. It’d be a great fit on Nintendo Switch, Evercade, or hell, even the mobile market. An ideal time waster if you want that wasted time to have an old timey arcade feel. As a very rare historical curio, it would be awesome to add this to a collection. It’d be alongside the games that were loved all along, and maybe finally find an audience. If you’re wondering “who would even think to put something like this in arcades in 1983? It’s so obviously doomed to fail!” that’s still a valid point. One that Bally Midway seem to have grasped to some degree in the first place. Originally, this game was spec’d out without the Pac-Man theme under the name Quiz Ms. Someone at Bally Midway asked the designers to add Pac-Man to it to make it more commercial. Hah. Also, I should point out Bally Midway didn’t learn their lesson. Remember when I mentioned Trivial Pursuit and Name That Tune earlier? Yea, those were made by Sente, who was bought in 1984 by.. Bally Midway. History is circular.. and yellow and eats ghosts if you get a power pellet.

Professor Pac-Man is Chick-Approved

Professor Pac-Man was developed by Bally Midway

THERE WERE FIVE VERSIONS OF THE TRIVIAL PURSUIT ARCADE GAME! JEEZ!