Hangly-Man

"Hangly-Man" is a hacked clone of the "Pac-Man" arcade game. It appeared sometime around 1981, at the height of the "Pac-Man" craze. "Hangly" is said to be an Engrish corruption of the word "hungry". The word only appears in the phrase "Bonus Hangly-Man at 10000 points," which is displayed when a coin is deposited.

"Hangly-Man" was typically in a "Pac-Man" case, implying that it was a regular "Pac-Man" game. When a coin was inserted, the "Hangly-Man" name would appear on the screen instead of "Pac-Man", along with the company name "Nittoh". A 1981 date appeared on the screen, but there was no copyright notice.

Character names

"Hangly-Man" used the original Japanese "Pac-Man's" ghost names:
*The red ghost was Oikake, nicknamed Akabei
*The pink ghost was Machibuse, nicknamed Pinky
*The light blue ghost was Kimagure, nicknamed Aosuke
*The orange ghost was Otoboke, nicknamed Guzuta

Game description

The major difference from the original "Pac-Man" game is that the first two boards and every even-numbered board after that are slightly altered versions of the original maze. The third board and every odd-numbered board after that are not mazes at all, but contain only the ghost house, the board's boundary outline, and the pills, arranged in straight vertical and horizontal lines. On these levels, in addition to the horizontal sideways left/right escape passage; there is also a vertical one connecting the top of the screen and the bottom, which the ghosts cannot enter. If the player moves the Pac-Man to anywhere in this passage, and then pushes the joystick to the left or right and holds it; the Pac-Man will become stuck in that position, and the monsters cannot catch him, even if he is far enough out that they can touch him. But as releasing the joystick frees him, one cannot leave the game running with this method.

Otherwise, the game-play, sound and graphics are exactly like "Pac-Man", except that the original patterns are not possible because the mazes are different. In many copies of the game, an added feature on the even numbered boards was that when an energizer was eaten, the entire maze turned invisible until the energizer wore off. In some, it would remain invisible until the player lost a life.

In addition to this game, there was an older hack version with a different altered maze, sometimes called "Scandal", and sometimes called simply "Puck-Man", the Japanese name for the original game.

There was even a hack of this hack called "Caterpillar Pac-Man" made in 1981 by Phi. In this game one plays as a caterpillar, and the ghosts are replaced by four spiders.

Ports

Because the game was an illegal bootleg of "Pac-Man", "Hangly-Man" was never ported to home video game systems or computers. However, there have been efforts by some homebrew game developers to port "Hangly-Man" to classic game consoles such as the Atari 5200 [http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=53525] , and the Atari 7800 [http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=70399] .

External links

*KLOV game|id=8070

* [http://caesar.logiqx.com/php/emulator_game.php?id=mame&game=hangly| Caesar.logix.com]

* [http://www.vgmuseum.com/pics6/hangly.html| "Hangly Man"] at the Video Game Museum.