The Magnavox Odyssey 2, also known as Philips Odyssey 2, is a second generation home video game console 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.
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, who 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.
Dig Dug is a maze arcade video game released by Namco in 1982. It was distributed in North America by Atari, Inc. The player digs underground tunnels to attack enemies in each level, by either inflating them to bursting or crushing them underneath rocks.
Munchkins are characters in the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Pac-Man Plus is an arcade game that was released by Bally Midway in 1983. 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.
Air-Sea War and Battle are two games that were released together as the fourth cartridge in the official Philips line of games for the Philips Videopac. In North America, the same game was released as Armored Encounter! / Subchase! for the Magnavox Odyssey² console.
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.
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 related to the copyright of video games, where Capcom alleged that Data East's game Fighter's History infringed the copyright of Capcom's game Street Fighter II. It was revealed that 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 the infringing game. In spite of the intentional similarities between the two games, the court concluded that Data East did not infringe upon Capcom's copyright, as most of these similarities were not protected under copyright. Judge William H. Orrick Jr. applied a legal principle known as the merger doctrine, where courts will not grant copyright protection where it would effectively give someone a monopoly over an idea.
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.
