The Legacy of Ms. Pac-Man; or Who is Crazy Otto?

Ms, not Mrs

In 1981, Namco unleashed what was to become the most successful arcade cabinet of all time, Ms. Pac-Man, which featured subtle but significant tweaks on the original Pac-Man, thus seriously enhancing the gameplay experience.  A few of these changes were as follows: 1) Apparently, the logarithms (not that I remember enough sophomore math to really get this) which were used to program the ghosts made them less predictable and more erratic,  2) instead of remaining static, the fruit dances around the play-field and appears in a random order,  3) and, of course, Ms. Pac-Man features a female protagonist–which was a rare find in the male-centric world of 80s gaming.

Even if you’re a wee-young gamer, you’re probably aware of these facts.  You’ve been raised in a world saturated with Pac-mania.  Many bars (and Laundromats) here in Brooklyn feature a Ms. Pac-Man machine (even if it is adjacent The Fast and the Furious).  What you’re probably not privy to is that Ms. Pac-Man began her long career with a snip and a tuck–namely, a sex change.  She was originally a little guy named Crazy Otto (see below).

Who the hell is Crazy Otto?  He’s the brainchild of two MIT students, Doug Macrae and Kevin Curran.  Macrae and Curran basically hacked one of the original Pac-Man consoles and made a few key alterations, giving him legs and turning the ghosts into Furby-esque monsters.  Aside from that, their wizardry had to do with slight alterations to the A.I. (if you could call it that).  When they realized that they had somehow created a fantastic game, they promptly sold it to Midway, the North American distributor of Pac-Man, who (in turn) handed it over to the rightful owners, Namco.  And that’s all she wrote.  Without Crazy Otto, Ms. Pac-Man wouldn’t exist; without two MIT college students, we wouldn’t have something to do with the 30 minutes that our laundry is drying.

Sources: Game Informer issue 201, Wikipedia.org

Otto is so crazy.