Pacman (glitched ROM)

About Pacman (glitched ROM)

Pacman, written on its pages in glitched letters and often called PacMan.exe, was released in 2015 by Berick Cook, with art by Thibaut Faddy, and made in GameMaker. Its page tells the story of a ROM taken from an apparently damaged arcade board found locked in a safe at the back of an old arcade, whose players suffered severe psychological and sometimes physical trauma. Dated technician reports on the itch.io page carry the story on, listing the testers lost while repairing the board and the changes each new ROM brings.

The game itself is the arcade maze you know, with the lights off. You can only see what Pac-Man can see, so the corridors ahead stay dark and the ghosts are hidden until they are near. Power pellets no longer turn the ghosts blue; the AV Club noted they give a few seconds of light across the maze instead. Each ghost behaves in its own way, the reports say they now make a faint sound when close, and the audio glitches and scrapes.

The fear comes from not knowing what is around the next corner of a maze you thought you knew, and from the slow, wrong feeling of a familiar game that has been damaged. The CRT effect and attract screen sell the idea of a real cabinet, and the reports hint that later levels hold anomalies of their own.

It is free. Play it in the browser on Game Jolt or itch.io, or download the Windows version, which starts full screen. It is an unofficial fan work on the arcade classic and suits players who like cursed-game stories and short, tense sessions of an arcade game turned against them.

How to play Pacman (glitched ROM)

1. Open the game on its Game Jolt or itch.io page and start the browser version, or download PacMan.exe for Windows.
2. Click the game screen, then press Enter or Space to put in a coin and start.
3. Move Pac-Man through the maze with WASD or the arrow keys and eat the dots to clear each level.
4. Listen for the ghosts and keep clear of them; you only see what is in Pac-Man's line of sight.
5. Eat a power pellet when you need to see the maze around you for a few seconds.

Tips

• Play with sound on: the reports say the ghosts make a faint sound when they come near.
• Save the power pellets for moments when you have lost track of where the ghosts are.
• If the CRT effect is hard on your eyes, press G to turn it off.
• Read the technician reports on the itch.io page before you play; they set up the story.

Questions