Puck Man Says: I am so Pucking Awesome.

Went to Mandarake two days ago. Looked in their glass case. Saw the above. Price was reasonable.

So, you know, I was all like:
Puck Man! Woo yeah!

This is one of those little bits of gaming history I have been looking to snag for the longest time. As every retro game collector with a penchant for useless trivia (ie every retro game collector) knows, Puck Man was the original name given to Pac Man.

When they discovered the ease with which the `P` in Puck could be turned into an `F` by 1980s kids with their devilish (dare I say?) senses of humor, they hastily changed the name to Pac Man.

So I don`t think it was ever known as Puck Man in North America, but for a short time that was the name of the game in Japan.

It is very hard to find physical remnants of this little quirk in the history of Pac Man, in fact my new Tomy handheld is the first time I have seen anything with Puck Man on it. By the time the game was released on the Famicom here it had already adopted the new name so I don`t think there are any other home game releases with the Puck Man title.
It was pretty cheap owing to the fact that it did not come with the box (which would have been a nice touch but I`m not complaining). I ran straight from Mandarake to the 100 yen shop to pick up some batteries and was really pleased to find that it works perfectly.

For an early 1980s handheld it is a pretty good game. You have two settings, amateur and pro. I`ve only tried amateur. Basically it is Pac Man only the screen isn`t the same as in the arcade or console versions and you don`t have the same range of movements. The sound effects are awesome though, it plays the Pac Man tune when you turn it on. Music to my ears. Literally.
Controls are pretty simple.

I love everything about this actually. The design is perfect. It actually looks a bit like Pac Man...er I mean Puck Man. It also looks somewhat like a microwaveable container with buttons. But, you know, in a good way.

A very nice addition to my growing handheld collection:)

More Retro Handhelds: Tomy Programingdigipro Powerman

This is the other present my wife gave me for our anniversary, the Tomy Programingdigipro Powerman handheld.

Seriously, "Programingdigipro" is actually in the name, all in one word on the top of the box:
This is one of those really really not-famous handhelds. There is precious little in English about this out there on the internet, so I thought I might use this post to introduce a few facts about it. The box and manual themselves don't provide a great deal of info in terms of the year it was released or anything like that, so I had to do a bit of research.

After a little looking around in Japanese I pulled up this (fantastic) page that features original Tomy handheld video game system catalogs from the early 80s. It really is a must-see item if you like things that are stupendously awesome.

My new Powerman handheld is to be found in there in the October, 1982 Tomy Omoshironics catalog, which gives its list price of 5,970 yen:
This describes it as a completely new "Monster game" on a "color LCD". This mantra is repeated on the box, which advertises "Pure color":
I suppose back in the day when all LCD displays were basically monochromatic, being able to display things in red, blue and black (as this game does) was a revolutionary breakthrough. If they hadn't drawn my attention to it though I probably wouldn't have noticed.

It is, I should hasten to add, a pretty cool game. You basically control a "Powerman" who has to navigate in a maze-like environment and capture little monsters (which are red) and take them back to your home base at the bottom of the screen without yourself being captured by one of the several big monsters out hunting you. The gameplay isn't too hard and I have rather enjoyed playing around with it.
Mine was complete in the box, with this kind of cool instruction manual:
The monsters look nothing like that in the game of course.

The console has a fair number of buttons, which is not necessarily something I like in a handheld, but they actually work pretty well:
I really dig the look of the thing, actually. Even before I found the catalog I had a feeling just looking at it that this was something made in 1982. This just looks so 1982. It is definitely not a 1981 thing. It just doesn't look 1981. Nor does it look 1983. 1982 though? Yup, that is where this thing is at.

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