The Magnavox Odyssey 2, also known as Philips Odyssey 2, is a home video game console of the second generation that was released in 1978. It was sold in Europe as the Philips Videopac G7000, in Brazil and Peru as the Philips Odyssey and in Japan as Odyssey2. The Odyssey 2 was one of the five major home consoles prior to the 1983 video game market crash, along with Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Intellivision and ColecoVision.
The Philips Videopac+ G7400 is a third-generation home video game console released in limited quantities in 1983, and only in Europe; an American release as the Odyssey³ Command Center was planned for the Odyssey series but never occurred. The G7400 was the successor to the Philips Videopac G7000, the European counterpart to the American Magnavox Odyssey². The system featured excellently tailored background and foreground graphics.
Pac-Man, originally called Puck Man in Japan, is a 1980 maze video game developed and released by Namco for arcades. In North America, the game was released by Midway Manufacturing as part of its licensing agreement with Namco America. The player controls Pac-Man, who must eat all the dots inside an enclosed maze while avoiding four colored ghosts. Eating large flashing dots called "Power Pellets" causes the ghosts to temporarily turn blue, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for bonus points.
Ms. Pac-Man is a 1982 maze arcade video game developed by General Computer Corporation and published by Midway. It is a spin-off sequel to Pac-Man (1980) and the first entry in the series to not be made by Namco. Controlling the title character, Pac-Man's wife, the player is tasked with eating all of the pellets in an enclosed maze while avoiding four colored ghosts. Eating the larger "power pellets" lets the player eat the ghosts, which turn blue and flee.
Mouse Trap is a maze video game developed by Exidy and released in arcades in 1981. It is similar to Pac-Man, with the main character replaced by a mouse, the dots with cheese, the ghosts with cats, and the energizers with bones. After collecting a bone, pressing a button turns the mouse into a dog for a brief period of time. Color-coded doors in the maze can be toggled by pressing a button of the same color. A hawk periodically flies across the maze, unrestricted by walls.
Munchkins are characters in the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Pac-Man Plus is an arcade game that was developed by Namco and released by Bally Midway in 1982. It is part of the Pac-Man series of games.
Jr. Pac-Man is an arcade video game developed by General Computer Corporation and released by Bally Midway in 1983. It has the same gameplay as prior entries in the series, but the maze in Jr. Pac-Man scrolls horizontally and has no escape tunnels. The bonus item which moves around the maze changes dots into a form which slows Jr. Pac-Man as they are being eaten.
Super Pac-Man is a 1982 maze chase arcade game developed and published by Namco. It was distributed in North America by Midway, and is Namco's take on a sequel to the original Pac-Man; Midway had previously released Ms. Pac-Man, which Namco had little involvement with. Toru Iwatani returns as designer.
1980 saw the release of a number of games with influential concepts, including Pac-Man, Battlezone, Crazy Climber, Mystery House, Missile Command, Phoenix, Rally-X, Space Panic, Stratovox, Zork, Adventure, and Olympic Decathlon. The year's highest-grossing video game was Namco's arcade game Pac-Man, while the best-selling home system was Nintendo's Game & Watch. The Atari VCS also grew in popularity with a port of Space Invaders and support from new third-party developer Activision.
A video game clone is either a video game or a video game console very similar to, or heavily inspired by, a previous popular game or console. Clones are typically made to take financial advantage of the popularity of the cloned game or system, but clones may also result from earnest attempts to create homages or expand on game mechanics from the original game. An additional motivation unique to the medium of games as software with limited compatibility, is the desire to port a simulacrum of a game to platforms that the original is unavailable for or unsatisfactorily implemented on.
Pac-Man is a 1982 maze video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. under official license by Namco, and an adaptation of the 1980 arcade game Pac-Man. The player controls the title character, who attempts to consume all of the wafers in a maze while avoiding four ghosts that pursue him. Eating flashing wafers at the corners of the screen causes the ghosts to temporarily turn blue and flee, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for bonus points. Once eaten, a ghost is reduced to a pair of eyes, which return to the center of the maze to be restored.
Pac-Mania is a cavalier perspective maze game that was developed and released by Namco for arcades in 1987. In the game, the player controls Pac-Man as he must eat all of the dots while avoiding the colored ghosts that chase him in the maze. Eating large flashing "Power Pellets" will allow Pac-Man to eat the ghosts for bonus points, which lasts for a short period of time. A new feature to this game allows Pac-Man to jump over the ghosts to evade capture. It is the ninth title in the Pac-Man video game series and was the last one developed for arcades up until the release of Pac-Man Arrangement in 1996. Development was directed by Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani. It was licensed to Atari Games for release in North America.
Midway Manufacturing Co. v. Artic International, Inc., 704 F.2d 1009, was a legal case where the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit found that Artic violated Midway's copyright in their arcade games Pac-Man and Galaxian. The lawsuit was part of a trend of "knock-off" video games in the early 1980s, with courts recognizing that a video game can qualify for protection as a copyrighted audiovisual work.
Crazy Chase is cartridge number 44 in the official Philips line of games for the Philips Videopac. The North American version for the Magnavox Odyssey² was called K.C.'s Krazy Chase!, an inside reference to then president of Philips Consumer Electronics Kenneth C. Menkin. It is a sequel to K.C. Munchkin!.
Capcom U.S.A. Inc. v. Data East Corp., 1994 WL 1751482 was a 1994 legal case in which the video game developer Capcom alleged that Data East's game Fighter's History infringed the copyright of its game Street Fighter II. The design documents for Fighter's History contained several references to Street Fighter II, leading Capcom to sue Data East for damages, as well as a preliminary injunction to stop the distribution of Fighter's History.
Atari, Inc. v. North American Philips Consumer Electronics Corp., 672 F.2d 607, is one of the first legal cases applying copyright law to video games, barring sales of the game K.C. Munchkin! for its similarities to Pac-Man. Atari had licensed the commercially successful arcade game Pac-Man from Namco and Midway, to produce a version for their Atari 2600 console. Around the same time, Philips created Munchkin as a similar maze-chase game, leading Atari to sue them for copyright infringement.
