Crazy Otto PAX East '10 Stage 1 Footage

During the 2010 PAX East event in Boston, I was able to play Crazy Otto, a modified Pac-Man upgrade developed by General Computer Corporation and eventually sold to Midway, where it would undergo a slight graphics change to better-fit the Pac-Man canon at the time. Thus, Ms. Pac-Man was born!

Aside from the character sprites, nothing else appears to have changed between Crazy Otto and Ms. Pac-Man, but the modifications made to the original Pac-Man design were already so great that nothing else needed to be added or modified.

For more video and info of Crazy Otto from the show floor, you can check here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd9ntXeSIU0

I would also like to apologize for the dark quality of the footage. I tried my best to get a shot of the screen (Thanks to my sister), and hopefully that's all that really matters.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Crazy
• Otto
• Ms
• Pac
• Man
• GCC
• Namco
• Midway
• Classic
• Arcade
• Video
• Game

[pythonfan1]

Those monsters looked like fish bowls every time an energizer was consumed.

[ScrewAttackEurope]

@Gtrtech Really? Oh, if only they knew :D

[Gtrtech]

@ScrewAttackEurope Midway wasn't "chosen" for the Pacman license, no one else wanted it. Midway didn't want it at first, and finally then company president Stan Jarocki gave it the green light. It was even given the brush off at the1980 AMOA show. The big stir was about Defender.....

[Evilmonkey66699]

@Freakservo The reason why Midaway handled releasing Pac-man in the US was because Midway had up until the multiple unofficial Pac-sequel debacle had been liscenced by Namco to handle the US distribution of their games in the arcades in the states starting with Galaxian in 1979. Atari Corp. on the other hand only had only bought the licensing rights to make home ports for the 2600 and other systems which at the time was their main interest at that time anyway.

[evenmorebetter]

Wow, I don't think that there have ever been videos or photos of the original Crazy Otto online before besides that one blurry screenshot from Time from the '80s. Watching it in action, I kind of expected there to be more differences between this and Ms. Pac-Man -- it looks like Midway really changed very little from this version, even the intermission scenes (which I suppose was a good idea, considering how popular the game wound up being).

[Freakservo]

@ScrewAttackEurope He recently ported GORF to the GBA, but it didn't get much exposure from the classic and indie game sites. Sad, too: It really was a good port, and it deserved more than it got.

[Freakservo]

@ScrewAttackEurope According to Wiki, Atari handled US/Europe distribution of that one, so I'm guessing that was after the fallout with Midway. I'll have to guess that the first Pac-game distributed by Namco in the US was Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures on the SNES/Genesis.

Jess is fine, but he's insisted that he's done with video reviews. I'd love to convince him otherwise, but he's pretty much focused on his GRB site and his stint on 1up's Retronauts blog.

[ScrewAttackEurope]

@Freakservo That is interesting though, they did dump Atari after a while, Was Pacmania the first title they did on their own?

How is Jess by the way? I really miss his stuff! He was one of the greats on here!

[Freakservo]

@ScrewAttackEurope The story goes was that Midway was getting impatient waiting for Namco to make the next Pac game (That was to be Super Pac-Man), and it just so happened that GCC was in the right place at the right time with Crazy Otto. I think Pac & Pal/Pac-Man & Chomp Chomp came after Super Pac-Man. TheGameroomBlitz will have to back me up on that one.

And you make a good point: I don't know why Midway had the Pac-Man license, but Atari was responsible for the awful 2600 port.

[ScrewAttackEurope]

@Freakservo Interesting, so the next Pac-Man game developed by Namco themselves was Pac and Pal?

But I've always wondered why Namco chose Midway for Pac-Man, when all their other titles were handled by Atari.