Boy, does this piece of Pac-Land art (produced by madamluna) bring back memories...

Of all the games I've attached memories to over the years, Pac-Land has to be among the oddest. After all, it's not like this quarter-muncher from 1984 is one of Namco's most-loved releases. Hell, it's not even one of the company's most-loved Pac-Man spin-offs.

I guess Pac-Land just came into my life at the right place and time. The former is especially relevant to this story, I think, considering the setting of my earliest memory of the game is a shopping-mall arcade that was located a few hours away from where I grew up.

I'm sad to say I can't remember exactly how old I was when I first encountered the Pac-Land cabinet in the aforementioned arcade, but I'm pretty sure I was in my early teens. Regardless, I distinctly remember my incredulous reaction to it. After all, this was a Pac-Man game that looked and played like the original Super Mario Bros.

And don't forget: this was back when the Internet was but a gleam in Al Gore's eye. If you didn't read gaming mags at that time, you often didn't know which quarter-munchers were being released or when until you walked into your local arcade, bar, bowling alley and the like.

Anyway, I was blown away the first time I laid eyes on Pac-Land. Admittedly, its odd control scheme--one button moves Pac-Man to the right, one moves him to the left and one makes him jump--leaves something to be desired, as does the repetitive simplicity of its overall gameplay, but this platformer's vividly colorful, "Saturday morning cartoon" visuals do quite a bit to make up for those flaws--or at least that's the effect they've always had on me.

All of the above should help explain why the piece of art that serves as the focus of this post resonated with me as much as it did when I first came across it late last week. Actually, I'm pretty sure it would have resonated with me even if I weren't an unabashed Pac-Land fan thanks to the unmistakable look of innocence and wonder that's splashed across Pac-Man's face.

Artist Pauli Kohberger, aka madamluna, is responsible for this winsome illustration, by the way. If you'd like to see more examples of her work--and, really, why wouldn't you?--head over to madamluna.deviantart.com at your earliest convenience.

It's really too bad Namco never released a console port of Tenkomori Shooting

Earlier this year, when my husband I visited one of Seattle's best hang-outs, Full Tilt Ice Cream--which not only serves up some wonderful ice cream (I'm looking at you, salted caramel) but also offers patrons a slew of pinball and arcade machines--I encountered a game I'd never seen or even heard of before.

That game: Tenkomori Shooting, a curious, Namco-made coin-op that first appeared on the scene (in an extremely limited number of North American locations, I'm sure) in 1998.

I didn't sit down and play this shmup-centric mini-game collection on that occasion, but I vowed to do so the next time we visited.

Apparently it wasn't meant to be, as I quickly discovered during our next ice-cream outing that the powers that be at Full Tilt had replaced Tenkomori Shooting's PCB with that of some other, far less interesting game.



That fact didn't depress me as much as you might think, as I was pretty sure the title must have been released for the PlayStation (in Japan, at least) at some point--meaning I could just go home, head to eBay, and order a copy for my collection. Heck, it even looks like it might have been made using Namco's System 11 arcade board, which was based on the Sony's hardware.

So, imagine my surprise when I found out it wasn't released for Sony's first console--or any other console, for that matter.

Thankfully, MAME's always an option, so if I get desperate for some Tenkomori Shooting action, I can go that route.

And I may just do that sooner rather than later given some of the curious-looking mini-games that are included in this arcade release--like the amorous one shown at the 3:00 mark in the video above, or the sushi-focused one at 3:34, or the Dig Dug-inspired one at 4:17.

Have any of you spent time with Tenkomori Shooting--either in an arcade setting or in your own homes (via MAME)? If so, what did you think of the experience?