Pac-Man Ghost Zone thrusts our pudgy pal into 14 wacky worlds,
each loaded with 3D poly-gonzo thrills. Pac-Man doesn't
just eat - he jumps, flies, swims, slides, and rolls in an
effort to battle an all-new cast of bad guys and ghosts.
Long live the king of game-dom, Pac-Man!
- Enter
Pac-Man's all new 3D world. Explore 14 weird and
wacky worlds, from Pac's house, to frozen waterfalls and a
spooky haunted mansion.
- Experience
the first true 3D water effects. Heard of the dog
paddle? Do the Pac-paddle as our hero shows off his 3D
swimming technique.
- Delight in
devilish diversions. Tons of tricks, traps,
puzzles and mazes makes this Pac-adventure the most
challenging ever.
- Power
pellets pack more punch. No longer just a dietary
supplement, Pac blasts his adversaries with powerful
projectiles.
- Even the
ghosts are scared. 20 fearsome frighteners have
joined forces with the most feared boss in Pac-history: the
Ghost Lord!
- Pac-Man
busts new moves. Sure, he still runs and eats -
but now he also swims, flies through the air and rockets
down roller coasters.
- Look Ma!
No rails! Unlike some other game mascots, Pac-Man
is free to move in any direction in his full 3D world.
First
Impressions:
The Museum was given a chance to play test a very early
build of Pac-Man Ghost Zone (PMGZ). Our first impression
of the game is that it contains some of the most detailed and
colorful graphics on the PlayStation. PMGZ is an
entirely different game compared to Pac-Man World. It
feels more like Tomb Raider and less like Pac-Man in 3D.
Conceptually PMGZ had tremendous potential to be a very good action adventure game.
"Pac-Man Ghost Zone was actually a lot of shots in the dark.
What was fun about the game we riffed on to make Pac-Man World.
Many ideas were unsuccessful, the ones that proved fun were
surprising to the development team. Many of the original team
were not comfortable with 3D games, and could not adjust to the
paradigm shift. Halfway through the development, we got a new
manager.." who made some sweeping changes. Gil Colgate,
Programmer
"The biggest
initial challenge in Pac-Man Ghost Zone was the Pac-Man model.
We started out trying to do him with polygons. It took way too
many to make a ball look round. One day Gil Golgate came up with
the idea to just use a round texture and make sure that it
always faces the screen. Then just move the eyes and mouth
around like they are resting on a 3D ball. It was a great idea
and solved the problem." John Hamilton, Programmer
"The game also
didn't have its own identity. It wasn't Pac-Man - it was a
yellow guy inside of a mechanical world that didn't make sense."
Brian Schorr, Producer
"Ghost Zone was
designed as a 3D platform action game along the same lines as
Mario 64. It didn't have a lot of the maze gameplay of the
original Pac-Man. In the original design the player is
transformed into Pac-Man and is sucked into an arcade machine by
an evil being inside the machine. The idea was inspired by the
movie Tron. The game took place in a fantasy world inside an
arcade machine. Ghost Zone was a neat idea, but we wanted to
take a new Pac-Man game in a different direction. We changed the
design to focus on the World of Pac-Man. We thought that a new
Pac-Man game should take place in a world of Pac-Man where
Pac-People and Pac-Animals live." Jesse Taylor, Director Namco
R&D
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THE ORIGIN OF PAC-MAN GHOST ZONE4 |
"When I joined
Namco Hometek in 1996, the artists and programming team were
finishing up another game, so the design team was tasked to
develop a new title. We came up with 8 games - 4 original and 4
based on Namco properties. We met with the head of the studio, a
Japanese gentleman, for a pitch session. After we were done, we
asked him "Which idea do you like best?" He thought for a moment
and said "Which one do YOU like?" We pointed to one of the
original ideas. He shook his head and said: "No. Develop one of
the Namco ones further." So we went back and polished up the
four designs. I remember one was based on the Namco theme park
Namja Town, another was an RPG that featured all of Namco's lead
characters, the third was Splatterhouse and the last one was
Pac-man Ghost Zone. We had another meeting and at the end, we
asked him: "Which one do you like?" (You'd think we would have
learned by now.) He replied "Which one do YOU like?" We said we
really liked the Namco RPG. He said: "No. Do Pac-Man." And
that's how Pac-Man Ghost Zone was started.
The Japanese home office was nervous about us making a Pac-Man
game, so they told us that we couldn't use the real Pac-Man.
Design Director Bill Anderson came up with a solution: A kid
gets sucked into an old arcade machine and turns into Pac-Man.
That way we could tell Japan "You are not really playing
Pac-Man." But that solution never sat well with the team - we
wanted to play the real Pac-Man! Along with the ghosts, the
game's enemies took inspiration from the story where you fought
things like angry capacitors and flying RAM chips. All very
tech-y (what can I say, we were in Silicon Valley in the late
90's!) When it came to the boss, we wanted to make one worthy of
Pac-Man. So, we took inspiration from the 80's TV show and
created a Mezmeron-analogy - the Ghost Lord whose real body was
a tiny globe with eyes set into a large robotic suit. He was
very Darth Vader-looking (at least he looked better than
Mezmeron) and we even considered hiring James Earl Jones to do
his voice - until we found out how much he charged!
We built a playable demo and even though there was some fun
gameplay, the game just never felt right. The environments all
felt too much the same and it was lacking a sense of grandeur
found in other games like the recently released Mario 64. Japan
must of felt the same way too - when we flew to Japan and
presented it to Namco president Nakamura-San, he was very
displeased. As a result, almost the entire team - save 1
designer (myself), 1 programmer (Gil Colgate) and 1 artist (Neil
Strudwick) - were fired and we had to start again on what
eventually became Pac-Man World."
WRITTEN BY:
SCOTT ROGERS. After
deciding that game designers have more fun, Scott Rogers
embarked on a 16 year career creating exciting game designs for
a number of titles including Sony's GOD OF WAR, Capcom's MAXIMO:
GHOSTS TO GLORY and its sequel MAXIMO VS. ARMY OF ZIN and
Namco's PAC-MAN WORLD. He is currently a Creative Manager at THQ
on many titles including DRAWN TO LIFE and DARKSIDERS.
There were a number
of difficulties we found in designing Pac-Man Ghost Zone, such
as, Namco had just got done globalizing the copyrighted images
of Pac-Man worldwide, without thinking what would happen if Pac
Man went 3D. So we had to work with Namco’s legal group to open
that back up again. Something they were not too keen on, seeing
it took over 2 years the first time around. But in the end they
know that Pac-Man’s future was going to be in 3D so better do
this now than later. This was important for us, not to be bound
to the 2D license before we could even plan out the game play
design.
After that we had to move on to staffing up and setting plans
for the game engine. This was a first for Namco US because this
would be the first PlayStation game to be developed at this
location.
Next I had to
delegate the environment game play design work out across two
other studio designers, because with me taking on the roll of
studio producer along with being the lead designer, there was
just no time for me to do all the designs myself. This worked
out well, for we had some really talented and imaginative people
there at the time. If there was one snag, it was just making
sure everyone one kept in mind the full vision of the game
concept, throughout the production.
With some games
there are often some team members who would like to go a
different direction with a game project, but with PMGZ we really
never had those types of issues. It was a cool concept that
everyone there seemed very excited about developing.
It was also a
simple and cute story, easy to follow and easy to dream up all
types of game play for. Unfortunately PMGZ’s production fell
victim to Namco going through an upper management change, which
was totally out of the control of anyone in development at the
time.
Who knows, maybe
someday Namco will come back around to doing Pac-Man Ghost Zone
again.
WRITTEN BY:
WILLIAM ANDERSON is
currently the Owner and President of Awaken Games and has been a
Lead Designer, Developer and Production Manager for well over
two decades now, having worked in-house for many of the top
developers and publishers in the world. He’s is not only
credited with designing many mega hit titles over the years,
such as Maximo Ghosts to Glory, Abe’s Oddysee, Cool Spot (Sega
Genesis) and Aladdin (Sega Genesis), just to name a few. But has
also had a hand in personally training many game designers who
have moved on to creating such titles as Command and Conquer,
God of War and many more historic game properties over the
years. He is also an international business consultant and
teacher, working to elevate the quality of game play design and
product development all over the world, while still being
actively involved in current game design projects for nearly all
next-gen platforms.
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