Pac & Pal

Pac & Pal
Also known as: Pac-Man & Chomp Chomp Developer: Namco Publisher: Namco Platform: Arcade (Namco Super Pac-Man) Released in JP: July 1983 This game has hidden developer credits. This game has unused graphics. This game has revisional differences.

Pac & Pal is either the tale of how Pac-Man made a friend who steals fruit from him and gives it to the ghosts, or the tale of how his dog is an idiot and gives them to the ghosts without realizing it.

It's also one of the few Pac-Man arcade games to not initially be released outside Japan, only seeing international distribution through Plug & Plays and the Namco Museum series.

Unused Graphics

Several animation frames of a ghost with a rather large lump growing out of its head.

"山下ため Y.Y. NG", which roughly translates to "Yamashita for Y.Y. NG". NG is speculated to refer to the Namco magazine of the same name, and "Yamashita" may refer to planner Yasunori Yamashita (who is also credited in Super Pac-Man). Note that these tiles only appear in Pac-Man & Chomp-Chomp, overwriting a chunk of the removed Pac & Pal title screen graphics.

Easter Egg

Enter Service Mode and press Left, Right (×9), Down (×5), Up (×6). If done correctly, the screen at left will appear.

(Source: Arcade History: Pac & Pal)

Revisional Differences

Although the game only released in Japan, Namco did plan to localize and release Pac & Pal in North America. There is another version of the game called Pac-Man & Chomp Chomp, which replaces Miru (the green ghost) with Chomp Chomp, Pac-Man's dog from the Hanna-Barbera Pac-Man cartoon. The game was pretty much done besides one or two missing graphics, but since it didn’t receive much of a profit from testing sites, it was ultimately cancelled. Functionally, Chomp Chomp acts exactly like Miru (as expected).

Pac & Pal	Pac-Man & Chomp Chomp

Aside from the title change, Pac-Man and Miru were replaced with...nothing. This may be because the game was never completely finished, or perhaps they simply had no plans for new title screen graphics.

Pac & Pal	Pac-Man & Chomp Chomp

Miru was (obviously) replaced by Chomp Chomp.