| genre = Platform
| modes = Single-player, multiplayer
| arcade system = Namco Pac-Land
is a 1984 platform game developed and published by Namco for arcades. It was released in North America by Bally Midway, and in Europe by Atari Games. Controlling Pac-Man, the player must make it to the end of each stage to return a lost fairy back to its home in Fairyland. Pac-Man will need to avoid obstacles, such as falling logs and water-spewing fire hydrants, alongside his enemies, the Ghost Gang. Eating large flashing Power Pellets will cause the ghosts to turn blue, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for points.
Pac-Land was conceptualized by Namco Research and Development 1 programmer Yoshihiro Kishimoto, who was tasked with creating an arcade game based on the American Pac-Man cartoon television series by Hanna-Barbera. The backgrounds were made to be vibrant and colorful, and the characters to be detailed and move smoothly to match the show's animation style. The control scheme was inspired by Konami's Track & Field (1983), using buttons instead of a traditional joystick to make it stand out among other games at the time. A new Namco Pac-Land arcade system was created to make it easier to develop the game and was used for several later Namco games, including Baraduke (1985) and Metro-Cross (1985).
Pac-Land was a commercial success in arcades, becoming one of the top five highest-grossing arcade games of 1985 in the United States. It was well-received by critics for its colorful graphics, stage designs, and soundtrack, but was criticized for its difficulty. It is cited as an important and influential game in the platform genre, paving the way for many games to follow such as Super Mario Bros., Ghosts 'n Goblins, Alex Kidd and Wonder Boy. It was ported to several home consoles and computers, including the Family Computer, PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16, Commodore 64 and Atari Lynx. It is the first platform game in the Pac-Man series, and was followed by Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures (1994).
Gameplay
thumb|left|Gameplay screenshot
Controlling Pac-Man, the player is tasked with reaching the end of each level while avoiding enemies and other obstacles. Stages are known in-game as "trips" and are broken into four sections — the first three have Pac-Man running to return a lost fairy back to "Fairyland", and the last having Pac-Man return home to his family. Pressing either of the directional buttons will make Pac-Man walk in that direction, and repeatedly tapping either button will make him run. Pac-Man can also jump over pits and obstacles by pressing the jump button.
In each stage, Pac-Man will encounter the four ghosts from the original game — Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde — alongside a purple ghost named Sue, originally a replacement for Clyde in Ms. Pac-Man.
Development
Pac-Land was programmed by Yoshihiro Kishimoto of Namco Development Division 1, who would later work on the Family Stadium franchise. After seeing the success of Hanna-Barbera's Pac-Man animated series, Namco asked Kishimoto to create an arcade game based on the show; Hanna-Barbera was not involved with the game's development beyond licensing elements related to the series. Kishimoto stated that the hardest part of development were Pac-Man's animations. Most arcade games in Japan at the time simply used two or three frames to convey movement, which he found unconvincing. However, the United States Copyright Office and John Szczepaniak in the second volume of The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers (2015), when including biography details taken from Kishimoto's resume, lists the release date as October 1984.
Ports
The first home port of Pac-Land was for Nintendo's Family Computer, released in Japan on November 21, 1985. Versions for the Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and MSX were published by British company Grandslam Entertainment in 1988, and developed by Gannon Designs and Mr. Micro for the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga platforms.
Pac-Land is in the 1996 compilation Namco Museum Vol. 4 for the PlayStation alongside five other Namco arcade games from the 1980s, and later in the iOS game Namco Arcade. In 2014, it was ported to the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC as part of Pac-Man Museum, and the Famicom version was digitally re-released for the Wii U Virtual Console and Namco Museum Archives Volume 2. Aside from the Namco Arcade version, all home ports of the game are based on the Japanese Namco version.
On March 31, 2022, it was announced that the arcade version of Pac-Land would be released on the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 as part of Hamster Corporation's Arcade Archives lineup, which was released on April 7, 2022. Though based on the original arcade version, this re-release was modified by Bandai Namco to replace the graphics of Ms. Pac-Man and Baby Pac-Man, who greet Pac-Man at the end of each trip. In their place are two new characters named "Pac-Mom" and "Pac-Sis"; which were created for the then-upcoming compilation Pac-Man Museum+, which also replaced the characters in all the games featured in the collection. Bandai Namco has remained silent on the removal of the characters, though news outlets assumed the character replacements to be related to a dispute between Bandai Namco and AtGames, which is related to Ms. Pac-Man.
The game is included in the Pac-Man Museum+ game compilation, which released on May 27, 2022. The version in this collection uses the same edited version as seen in the Arcade Archives release because of Bandai Namco's legal issues with AtGames.