I was recently clearing up the spare room in my house when I came across a neat relic of my past. When I was but a small child my sister gave me an old Futuretronics Pac Man handheld video game. This was one of my first experiences with gaming and I would carry that chunk of plastic with me everywhere, just in case I felt like a quick game of Paku-Paku.
As you can see from the image below, it’s a rather vintage looking system and is much larger than the usual Game and Watch style devices. It also has control directions displayed near the joystick and indicators for where the Power Pellets, score etc. are on the screen.
The nifty little arcade style joystick controls the action and although it’s a bit shifty at times, it manouvers Pac Man around the board fine.
Fun tidbit; this was the third model of the handheld to be released, the other two Puck Monster versions being released by Gekken and CGL in 1982 (pre-dating my birth).
Now to explain how the game plays is exactly the same as explaining most other Pac Man releases throughout history; you’re a little yellow guy who eats pellets and the occasional ghost. The visuals are different to most other interperatations of the classic Pac Man but look great nonetheless.
He looks to be in massive amounts of pain. It’s kind of hard to watch.
I filmed a short video of me playing the device which will give you a good idea of how it looks and sounds in action.
So that was my first look back in the aisles of handheld videogaming history. I say first since I had a lot of old school handhelds as a child so if I come across any more i’ll write up about them.
I hope you enjoyed the read, wakka wakka.