Tinkle Pit

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Tinkle Pit
Tinkle Pit arcade flyer.jpg
Developer(s) Namco
Publisher(s) Namco
Designer(s) Kohji Kenjoh
Composer(s) Yoshie Arakawa
Platform(s) Arcade
Release
  • JP: December 1993
Genre(s) Maze
Mode(s) Single-player, multiplayer

Tinkle Pit [lower-alpha 1] is a maze arcade game released by Namco in 1993 only in Japan. It features many of the characters from the company's earlier games (including: the Galaxian flagship, Pac-Man, the Rally-X Special Flag, the Solvalou from Xevious , Mappy from his self-titled game and several others besides, many of whom only initially appeared in the game they were created for).

Contents

Gameplay

Pitt laying down wire in the game's second world. Tinkle Pit screenshot.png
Pitt laying down wire in the game's second world.

Pitt (and Patti) must walk around the mazes, collecting items and avoiding enemies (which include the Heitai from Toy Pop along with the Pookas and Fygars from Dig Dug ); however, they have the power to drop their Tinker Balls, which are both invulnerable to the enemies, and move around by pressing the Line button, thereby creating a line between them and their balls. Releasing the button makes their balls come back to them; the enemies are killed by having the balls slam into them. There are also pieces of popcorn which can be picked up around the mazes - and pressing the Popcorn button, Pitt and Patti can throw them at the enemies, which bounce off the walls until they hit an enemy (or evaporate if they have not done so by the end of the stage). Killing all enemies in a maze advances the player to the next stage; however, in the event of one enemy remaining, he will make for the nearest corner of the maze, say "Bye-bye!", and disappear (which detracts from the "Pursuit Bonus" that the players receive after they defeat Mao at the end of the game).

Reception

In Japan, Game Machine listed Tinkle Pit on their April 15, 1994 issue as being the twenty-first most-popular arcade game at the time. [1]

Scott Alan Marriot of Classic Gamer in 2004 believed Tinkle Pit carried the same kind of simplicity present in games like Pac-Man (1980) and Dig Dug (1982). [2] In 2015, Retro Gamer found the game to be strange yet charming, liking its level variety and simplistic mechanics. They blamed the genre's severe decline in popularity and its confinement to Japan as the reasons for its obscurity, and said that it would appeal to Namco fans for its amount of references and cameos to their other properties. Retro Gamer also viewed it as a good example of the transitioning video and arcade game scene of the decade, writing: "If you ever need reminding that the arcade market of the early Nineties was a weird, transitional scene, Tinkle Pit should serve well." [3]

Ports and re-releases

A port of the game for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch was released by Hamster Corporation on July 11, 2024, as part of Hamster's Arcade Archives lineup of games; the Arcade Archives re-release marks the first re-release of the game since the original arcade release. [4] [5] While the game remains mostly unchanged from the original arcade version, the Arcade Archives version notably removes any graphics featuring Ms. Pac-Man, replacing the characters graphics with that of Pac-Man. While Bandai Namco had not given reason to why the changes were made, several outlets have assumed it to be related to the character's ongoing AtGames dispute. [6] [7]

Notes

  1. ↑ Japanese: ティンクルピット, Hepburn: Tinkuru Pitto

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References

  1. ↑ "Game Machine's Best Hit Games 25 - テーブル型TVゲーム機 (Table Videos)". Game Machine (in Japanese). No. 470. Amusement Press. 15 April 1994. p. 25.
  2. ↑ Scott Alan Marriot (April 2004). "MAMEusements - Tinkle Pit". Vol. 2, no. 1. Classic Gamer. pp. 18–19. Retrieved March 16, 2021.
  3. ↑ Retro Gamer Team (22 April 2015). "Tinkle Pit". Retro Gamer . United Kingdom. Archived from the original on 6 September 2015. Retrieved 11 April 2020.
  4. ↑ Extension, Time (2024-07-10). "Namco's 'Tinkle Pit' Is This Week's Arcade Archives Release". Time Extension. Retrieved 2024-09-29.
  5. ↑ rawmeatcowboy (2024-07-10). "Arcade Archives: Tinkle Pit heads to Switch July 11th, 2024". GoNintendo. Retrieved 2024-09-29.
  6. ↑ "Daily Pac-Man on X". 2024-07-12.
  7. ↑ Rich Stanton (2022-04-08). "Ms. Pac-Man is being written-out of Pac-Man history". PC Gamer. Retrieved 2024-09-29.
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