With the release of the Arcade Archives: Pac-Land compilation, players discovered the presence of new characters replacing Baby Pac and Ms. Pac-Man.
If you are old enough to have known the Bandai Namco franchise episodesyou know that one of the main characters of the lore Pac man (to the point of having had its own dedicated game) is Ms. Pac-Man, the girlfriend of the yellow ball. But now, the latter has disappeared in favor of “Pac-Mom”.
A legal dispute over the right of the character
Indeed, for several years a dispute is ongoing with AtGames. This studio specializing in the remake of arcade games has acquired the rights to Ms. Pac-Man from the official owners, GCC, behind the mode that gave rise to the first game with this character. GCC had in the 80s sold the property to Midway, now defunct American studio.
Without asking for Bandai Namco’s consent, AtGames has estimated for several years that it has exclusive rights of use by having recovered the agreements made by GCC with Midway. After releasing products based on this certainty, which Bandai Namco rejected, the two companies announced in 2020 an amicable agreement and the resolution of the case. Not so much after all. In the game Arcade Archives: Pac-Landeveryone has changed.
Ms. Pac-Man no longer has her red frills, but pink heels and gloves. Baby Pacthe couple’s baby who looked like his mother, has also changed, also wearing pink clothes and a flower on his head.
If the agreements were confidential at the time, it would seem that the use of characters are now prohibited on the side of Bandai Namco. As a result, two new characters with unexplained lore are to be found in this reissue of Pac-Land, released this April 7 on Switch and PS4.
so apparently I found out that the Arcade Archives release of Pac-Land that comes out tomorrow was modified to replace Ms. Pac-Man (as well as Baby Pac) to have the new Pac-Mom character from Pac-Man Museum++.
look at what you did to us AtGames pic.twitter.com/gEDNpXGMfV
—Nick C. (@nickisonlinet) April 6, 2022
The Arcade Archives series director also confirmed the “censorship” on Twitter, quoting another user:
Namco Bandai was very angry that the developer of Ms. Pac-Man (GCC) sold its royalty rights to AtGames a few years ago. BANDAI NAMCO does not want to pay royalties to AtGames for Ms. Pac-Man and tends to exclude it from their release.
Source: www.eurogamer.net
