K.C. Munchkin!

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K.C. Munchkin!
Munchkin Coverart.png
European cover
Publisher(s) Philips, Magnavox
Designer(s) Ed Averett
Platform(s) Magnavox Odyssey 2
Release 1981
Genre(s) Maze

K.C. Munchkin!, released in Europe as Munchkin, is a maze game for the Magnavox Odyssey 2. Its North American title is an inside reference to then president of Philips Consumer Electronics, Kenneth C. Menkin.

Contents

Designed and programmed by Ed Averett, Munchkin is very heavily based on Namco's 1980 arcade game Pac-Man , but not a direct clone. It was, however, similar enough for Atari to sue Philips and force them to cease production of Munchkin. Atari was exclusively licensed to produce the first play-at-home version of Pac-Man, but Munchkin hit store shelves in 1981, a year before Atari's game was ready. Atari initially failed to convince a U.S. district court to halt the sale of Munchkin, but ultimately won its case on appeal. In 1982, the appellate court found that Philips had copied Pac-Man and made alterations that "only tend to emphasize the extent to which it deliberately copied the Plaintiff's work." The ruling was one of the first to establish how copyright law would apply to the look and feel of computer software. [1]

Pac-Man dispute

Atari sued Philips for copyright infringement, arguing that Munchkin copied Pac-Man with its substantial similarities as evidence. In Atari, Inc. v. North American Philips Consumer Electronics Corp. , the court noted twenty-two similarities, but also nine differences: [2] [3]

After Munchkin was forced off the market, Philips released a sequel called K.C.'s Krazy Chase! [4] (Crazy Chase outside the U.S.) which implicitly depicts the conflict between Phillips and Atari by pitting the Munchkin character against an insectoid, tree-eating opponent called the Dratapillar, which very strongly resembles the antagonist of Atari's Centipede . In Crazy Chase's maze, the Munchkin character powers up and advances not by eating pills, but by devouring the Dratapillar's segmented body. Redesigned to avoid another copyright dispute, the Munchkin character rolls through Crazy Chase's mazes without the continuous chomping motion characteristic of Pac-Man.

See also

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References

  1. Legal Battles that Shaped the Computer Industry, by Lawrence D. Graham; published 1999 by Quorum Books; via Google Books
  2. "Atari, Inc. v. North American Philips Consumer Electronics Corp., 672 F.2d 607 (7th Cir. 1982)". Justia Law. Retrieved 2021-05-30.
  3. Hemnes, Thomas M. S. (1982). "The Adaptation of Copyright Law to Video Games". University of Pennsylvania Law Review. 131:171 (1): 171–233. doi:10.2307/3311832. JSTOR   3311832.
  4. Goodman, Danny (Spring 1983). "Home Video Games: Video Games Update". Creative Computing Video & Arcade Games. p. 32.

Sources