itch.io

Well, everything I had planned for Beta 1 I added while I was making Alpha 6, so now Alpha 6 is Beta 1, and I moved it up to today.  Crazy, right?

At this point it'll probably be just bug fixes and cleanup, unless I get any crazy new ideas, and then we make it official on 5/22 as planned, and... welp, there ya go.  Booze Elroy.

• Added large maze support, including all original Jr. Pac-Man mazes
• Added "stun" Pac-ability... knock 'em for a loop!
  
• Added "sonar" options, limiting ghost visibility, for an extra challenge.
  
• Added "jetpack" speed mode, for some truly ridiculous action.
  
• Three all-new semi-hilarious intermissions!
  
• Added "blackout" blindfold mode -- see everything for 4 seconds, then see nothing, forever!
• Added "faster" Pac speed, changed "Fast Pac" to "fastest".
• Added "every 5k" extra life option
• Added "Ms. Pac" ghost scatter option
• Mazes now organized into "maze packs"
• Added maze packs ("ultra", "arrange[ment]"...)
• Improved attract screen
• Added ability cooldown audio cue

Booze Elroy offers a lot of crazy fun option to mess with Pac-Man to your heart's content, but its original purpose was to be the most perfect Pac-Man clone I could figure out how to make.

So I set Booze to its most basic, core, default settings, and loaded up the original Pac-Man ROM in the ol' emulator, and looked at them side by side.

Then... I tried to play them at the same time.

Playing Pac-Man and Booze Elroy at the same time!

A couple of folks have been nice enough to write up ol' Booze Elroy in their indie game blogs and social media posts, but a running theme seems to indicate that if you want to try this out, you might want to do it sooner rather than later, before it gets pulled down for what I will nebulously describe as "legal reasons".

Here are a couple reasons why I don't think this will happen:

1.  Nobody knows about it.  Nobody is even reading this post.  You, you there, you are not even reading this post, that's how under the radar it is.

2.  Several other Pac-Man fan games, some way fancier and slicker than my effort here, have thrived and are continuing to thrive here on itch.io.  I won't mention Pac-Man 37 by name, but it's absolutely outstanding, and can recreate the original game just as well as my game (though perhaps without so many ridiculous configuration options...)

However, if it DOES get pulled down, I'll just consider that a win condition.  The fan game so good it's illegal!

GET PSYCHED!!

Booze Elroy Alpha 6 Teaser

Alpha 6 has some really great, fun new features!  But all these great, fun new features will require some significant testing, and while I have a great time testing it myself (because let's face it, it's still Pac-Man, and Pac-Man is always, ALWAYS fun to play), I could use an "extra set of eyes" or two.

Let me know if you're interested in helping out here, and I'll package up an Alpha 6 preview and send it on out to ya!

Thanks, and a big, hearty wacka-wacka to you all!

Also I'm not sure what other releases we'll have before 1.0, but I am definitely releasing 1.0 on 5/22, which is the same day Pac-Man was first made available back in 1980.

In addition to the planned features like larger maps and more maze packs, I couldn't help adding a few unplanned ones as well, like...

JETPACKS and SONAR??

Booze Elroy Alpha 6 Preview

Total insanity.

Alpha 6 is tentatively scheduled for 2/1/26, and will focus on adding more mazes, larger mazes, and "maze packs" for better organization.

Beta 1 is tentatively scheduled for 3/1/26, and should finally include real intermissions, more of everything, and tidy up any remaining issues from the Alpha testing period.

After that... I dunno!  We'll see where it goes!

What began as a simple programming exercise quickly spiraled wildly out of control and grew into my love letter to the greatest arcade game of all time, Pac-Man.

Like many love letters, mine is somewhat awkward, and not ultimately worthy of the object of its affections, but it turned out to be something much more than I originally envisioned, a recreation of the original game to the most exacting standards I could manage (with one little graphical flourish you'll notice toward the end of levels), but one that I could tweak and toy with to my heart's content.

To that extent, I'm very happy with how it came out, and am hopeful that others will have as much fun with it as I've had (and continue to have), so it's time to release it to the world!

Any and all comments, suggestions, bug reports and the like are more than welcome!  I had a small group of kind, passionate testers helping me out, but I'm sure there's still plenty glitches to be found and improvements to be made, so let me have it!

Putting this together has been the most fun I've ever had with a computer, and a large part of the reason is that while testing it, I was still basically just playing Pac-Man, and it's a testament to that game's timeless nature that it's still as much fun now as it was when I first put a quarter into that strange new machine with the little yellow circle guy back in 1980.  (Yes, I'm old.)

Have fun!  And... wacka-wacka!

(for posterity, this was before the itch.io page was launched.)

• NEW MODE: Autoplay!
• NEW OPTION: Phasing! (space/A button to become invulnerable for 1 second, 1 second cooldown.)
• NEW OPTION: Blindfold (hide the maze, the dots, both, or everything!)
• NEW OPTION: Starting level
• IMPROVED ATTRACT SCREEN: rolls to gameplay after a few seconds.  Fun, right?  RIGHT!?!
• Added controller support for menus/in-game pause/phasing
• Added option to save current configuration
• Added option to reset default configuration
• Added "none" option for extra lives
• Added "random" option for maze colors
• Added "random" option for backgrounds
• Added nine new maze colors
• Added five new backgrounds
• Added third extra ghost ("gronky!")
• Added placeholder Intermissions
• Fixed audio bug, fixed a couple video bugs
• Changed in-menu sound effects to be awesomer
• Moved reset highscore to Options menu
• Changed extra ghost AI
• Alt-Enter now switches between fullscreen and windowed
• "M" mutes in-game

• New mazes (10 total)
• "Random" maze mode (picks mazes randomly, not random maze generation... yet?!) 
• "Pac-Man Plus" mode
• "Plus" difficulty option
• "Haunted" blindfold option... you can see everything!  For a while...
• 3 different ability settings - phase/boost/both 
• Can now set between 0 and 7 ghosts 
• Added Pac-Man Fever and music from Pac-Man Arrangement
• Reorganized options menu
• New maze styles (21 total)
• New backgrounds
• Default colors per Maze/Mode
• Enabled analog stick in menus (thanks ICJ!)
• Reassigned gamepad buttons (thanks ICJ!)
• Added fun (?) graphic effect for Elroy

ALPHA 4 RELEASE NOTES (for posterity...)
----------------------------------------
- NEW MODE: Autoplay!
- NEW OPTION: Phasing! (space/A button to become invulnerable for 1 second, 1 second cooldown.)
- NEW OPTION: Blindfold (hide the maze, the dots, both, or everything!)
- NEW OPTION: Starting level
- IMPROVED ATTRACT SCREEN: rolls to gameplay after a few seconds.  Fun, right?  RIGHT!?!
- Added controller support for menus/in-game pause/phasing
- Added option to save current configuration
- Added option to reset default configuration
- Added "none" option for extra lives
- Added "random" option for maze colors
- Added "random" option for backgrounds
- Added nine new maze colors
- Added five new backgrounds
- Added third extra ghost ("gronky!")
- Added placeholder Intermissions
- Fixed audio bug, fixed a couple video bugs
- Changed in-menu sound effects to be awesomer
- Moved reset highscore to Options menu
- Changed extra ghost AI
- Alt-Enter now switches between fullscreen and windowed
- "M" mutes in-game

Alpha 5 Release Notes
---------------------
- New mazes (11 total)
- "Random" maze mode (picks mazes randomly, not random maze generation... yet?!)
- "Pac-Man Plus" mode
- "Plus" difficulty option
- "Haunted" blindfold option... you can see everything!  For a while...
- 3 different ability settings - phase/boost/both
- Can now set between 0 and 7 ghosts
- Added music from Pac-Man Arrangement
- Reorganized options menu
- New maze styles (21 total)
- New backgrounds
- Default colors per Maze/Mode
- Enabled analog stick in menus (thanks ICJ!)
- Reassigned gamepad buttons (thanks ICJ!)
- Added fun (?) graphic effect for Elroy

This is still the most exciting project on the internet right now, at least in my (absolutely correct) opinion.  Good luck and keep it up!  You know, if you can!

I'll go ahead and start panicking now, just to get a head start and beat the rush later.

HOW LONG!?!?

And do you know why they named themselves that?
Has that managed to seep into your brain in the two years since you posted this idiotic comment?

This is funny, he understood your question and gave you the absolute best, most comprehensive answer possible, and you completely failed to read/comprehend it.

Don't ever change, internet.

I believe!!
I mean, you're probably right, but...

Why are you shaking your head at that, friend?

Hey, I just thought it was an excellent recreation -- I was hunting around for available recreations last week and I thought yours was pretty great, that's all.  I think it's good enough now, I'll let you get back to whatever else you were doing.  :)

This was a great project.  Dunno if the developer is still out there, but great job

Never mind, I found it.

debug mode - PacMan 5 - A faithful remake by elPatrixF

What's the SECRET CODE??!!

Ha!  Nice update!  :)

If you are interested in continued tweaks and fixes, I'm happy to help.  If you'd rather just call it "done" now, that's fine too, it's pretty darned perfect.

Very informative and interesting, thanks for the reply.  Of course, there's MAME for getting the true experience since it runs the original ROMs, but however you did it, the results were fantastic.  (Except for the starting direction.  :) )

wah wah wah wah wah wah chigawwnnnnng

I run this in MAME?  Sorry, I'm a MAME noob, how do I install this?

This just looks like regular Pac-Man.

(Nobody has made that joke before.)

And if you're NOT being sarcastic, then how did you create a virtually perfect replica of the original game, including fixing an obscure bug with Pinky, without ever playing the game?  :D

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, but if not, then yes, in the actual arcade game, Pac-Man starts going left when the game starts.

That's how excited I am about it.

Excitement level: 256/256.

If I had to choose between this and a raw, irritating rash, I would take this almost every single time.

That's how excited.

After a couple more hours with the game, I have to amend my comment.

This is the best Pac-Man game that has ever been made.

This is FANTASTIC.  Oh man.  I wish arcades were still a thing because this would be the best Pac-Man sequel ever.

Awesome.  Five stars, no notes.

This is amazing.  Except Pac-Man starts to the right.  That hurts my brain.  Can... can you fix that?  :D

Absolutely awesome!  One noob question:  What do the "difficulty" settings modify?  Ghost speed?  AI?  Blue time?  All of the above?

Amazing

You're a genius.  I would pay money for you to update the PC version with the awesome features you put into this one.  Probably not enough to make it worth your while if you weren't planning on doing it anyway, but yeah.  That would be wonderful and epic.

(But this is already wonderful and epic, amazing work!)