Pac Man Board Game by MB Games - 1982

Here's my newest requisition, well I actually bought it for Aaron - he doesn't know it yet though!

Aaron has inherited my love of Retro Games and Retro Games Consoles, I have to say I still can't get used to the things I loved and played in my childhood and into my teens as now being "Retro" and "Collector's Items" when the hell did that happen?!

Still it's best not to dwell on that, at least in some ways it makes me considered cool!

My favourite game growing up was Pac Man and at a push  (i.e. when no Pac Man was available) Ms Pac Man and I guess it must have been the favourite game of many others too as, not being a company to miss a trick MB Games brought out the board game version in 1982.

I'm pretty sure that Aaron doesn't know this game exists, so that's going to be fun, when he finds out that not only does it exist, but he also owns it, and I think he's going to be really happy to have this as part of his Retro Gaming Collection - even if it isn't computer game, it will still look great sitting next to his Binatone TV Master MK 8 (from 1977) actually that's kind of crazy when you consider how much Gaming progressed in just a few short years... But enough of that, I'm sure if you don't know about this game, you want to know all the specifics and how to play it, so here goes...

As you can see the game box comprises of a board designed to look just like the boards on an Arcade or Console version of the Pac Man game, it's for 2 to 4 players, but is much more fun, the more players you have...

It comes with 4 Pac Man (or should that be men?) counters and a corresponding colour coded tray, you have 2 ghosts and 2 die and a lot of white marbles, some yellow ones too; and here's what you do...

Firstly you need to set up the board, you do this by placing the marbles onto each of the indents on the board, these are colour-coded so you know where to place the yellow ones.

 The Ghosts are placed in the middle square, place the Pac Man counters in their colour coded spaces, with the corresponding tray on on the table in front of  each player ... then you fight over who gets to be the Yellow Pac Man, then who's going first (or be sensible and throw the die to find out!) and then it's "Play Time"!

And here's how you do it:

You throw both die, one determines how many spaces your Pac Man can move, and dots (marbles) he can eat and the second relates to how many places a ghost can move.

Now the cool thing about the moves is you do so by placing your Pac Man over each dot and pressing down, his mouth makes a "munching" motion and the dot is retained inside him, after you have finished your go, you empty out the dots into your tray and it's the next player's turn.

http://boardgamegeek.com/image/395162/pac-man-game

The aim of the game is of course to munch as many dots as you can whilst simultaneously moving your Ghost away from you and closer to your opponent's Pac Man... if he get's Ghosted, he has to go back to the starting square.

Interestingly, the colours of the Ghosts differ from box to box, the one I have purchased has yellow ones, but I've also seen Blue, Green and Red ones, I can't help wondering why they didn't include Ghosts of  more than one colour in each set, or why they chose these particular colours for the Ghosts, but then again "Who cares?"

Pac Man is awesome and this board game is well cool!