Fans have reacted negatively to Ms Pac-Man’s removal in Pac-Man World remake
Fans have been reacting negatively to the removal of Ms Pac-Man from the upcoming remake of Pac-Man World.
Bandai Namco announced on Tuesday that it was working on Pac-Man World Re-Pac, a modernised version of the 1999 PlayStation platformer.
The original game had Pac-Man travelling through six worlds in an attempt to rescue six other characters, including Ms Pac-Man.
However, the announce trailer for Re-Pac shows that Ms Pac-Man has been replaced with the new, recently introduced ‘Pac-Mom’ character.
The substitution is a result of Bandai Namco’s attempt to keep Ms Pac-Man out of its games until it resolves an ongoing dispute over rights to the character’s royalties.
Ms Pac-Man has always had issues regarding royalties – the character isn’t an official Namco creation, and was instead created by Midway (who had been given the rights to produce Pac-Man products in North America) and a group of US programmers at the General Computer Corporation (GCC).
As a result, any time Ms Pac-Man has appeared in Bandai Namco products, GCC is reportedly owed royalties.
The situation was exacerbated further complicated in 2019 when AtGames, a company that specialises in mini retro consoles and handhelds, released a Ms Pac-Man mini arcade cabinet, despite Bandai Namco claiming it never gave permission to do so.
Bandai Namco sued AtGames, who one week later did a deal with GCC to acquire the Ms Pac-Man royalties interest allegedly owed to it.
Since then, Bandai Namco has seemingly made efforts to ensure that Ms Pac-Man doesn’t appear in any of its games, so as to avoid further complicating the royalties dispute.
Notice: To display this embed please allow the use of Functional Cookies in Cookie Preferences.
Following the trailer’s release, a number
Read more on videogameschronicle.com
