ZX Spectrum Pac-Man Arcade
A downloadable game
This is a faithful conversion of the original Pac-Man arcade for the ZX Spectrum 48K with the goal of seeing what could have been possible at the time of the 48K release in 1982. Everything was recreated with as much detail as possible through hours of reading of multiple Pac-Man guides and playing the original game. Being a conversion, some concessions were made to work around the limitations of the 48K but the overall result is still pretty close. The game runs at a silky smooth 50fps with game sound and no tearing or flickering.
All the level progression, logic, rules and timings are implemented exactly like the arcade. All the intermissions are included at the end of the right levels. All the ghost logic was replicated exactly as the original. A fix has been made to Inky's logic which had a bug in the original. Game does not "crash" like the original arcade at the end of level 256. It simply ends with a Game Over. It also supports a 2 Players game like the arcade.
Download
Install instructions
Download the TAP or TZX file and pop it into your ZX Spectrum emulator of choice or your real hardware. It has a custom loader with some effects if you like to load games the old school way and wait for it to load.
Development log
- New version available75 days ago
- New version available94 days ago
Comments
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Hoho Marco,
we hope you doing great. I am Areeba Malik (aka Titania) from the BrewOtaku-Team, we are launching our first homebrew gaming magazine soon. We loved your work and we have mentioned your game “Pac-Man Arcade” in our very first issue.
Please share your contact details if you would like to have a digital copy of our magazine. As we intend to sell the magazine at a very affordable price, you would need to keep it confidential for you only, of course you would get a free copy.
We look forward to hearing from you soon.
This is amazingly accurate
Sorry, but I've just noticed a bug in v1.2. Just playing the first level, the cherries appeared for the second time (I think) – I'd missed them first time round – and they seemed to stay on-screen an unexpectedly long time. But I managed to reach them, and rather than collecting them, Pac-Man passed right over them and they stayed there on the screen.
You are correct! :) The timing for that to happen would have to be within 1/50th of a second between the fruit bonus disappearing and Pac-Man eating a dot or pellet but just looking at the code I can see how that would happen. I'll get a fix out soon.
I hope you can make other Pac-Man games like Jr. Pac-Man or Super Pac-Man 😁 Very good game.
Yeah! Jr. Pac-man is underrated. It's an awesome game
very good
Had a go of v1.1 as well. Great fun :)
Where were you playing and recording this? It's dropping every other frame during the intermission (which is causing the flashing) and it shouldn't happen.
Spectaculator 8.0 recorded with OBS.
Would love to play this on my Proper ZX Spectrum 48k or 128k +2, would you please release a .TAP for us all? Some of us don't play on emulators :)
An update is available that also includes a TAP version now.
Thank you so much!!!! Also the game is fantastic. Really impressed with the ghost routines, they seem very close to the arcade. Controls are great, very well done and thanks for the .TAP file!!! Cheers
Looks wonderful! Would you release a tap version too?
An update is available that also includes a TAP version now.
THANK YOU SO MUCH!
Very nice and extremely clean arcade conversion for this system. Our German-language review can be found in our recorded livestream starting at 05:02:28. Subscription to our YouTube or Twitch channel is welcome. 🙂
What a great game, the best I've seen of Pacman on Spectrum, spectacular
Marco, antes de mais nada parabens por essa belissima versão, muito fiel ao arcade dentro das limitações do Spectrum, de longe a melhor versão já feita.
Deixe eu relatar um "bug" bem entre aspas, que acontece no TK90X , clone brasileiro do Spectrum. O jogo fica numa velocidade bem lenta. E ja descobri o porque, o TK90X trabalha em 60HZ e não em 50Hz.
Very well done, thank you. I also added that to my December's New ZX Spectrum Games -video too.
Impressive, great, speccy-curated version. We have an exact arcade emulator for pacman on +3 machines but this one is clearly better suited for speccy. it will not be easy to top this one off. thanks.
Thank you for this brilliant v ersion, here is my tribute...
Great work, well done! Any chance of a TAP version as I want to play it on my classic hardware - thank you :)
An update is available that also includes a TAP version now.
Wonderful! Thank you very much, and again, superb work, well done sir!
Made a quick little tape box for it :)
Another question. Would it be possible to add a *.tap (instead *.tzx) version of the game? Thank you
@retrolover, please check this video out of another game I made - it shows you how to do this and what tool to use. It was another Spectrum game, but you needed to mod it.
Please check the chapters and you want the modding one on the video.
But we must talk about this game...
@marco-leal-zx, this is awesome what you have done it really is. There will be a video on my channel for this on 3rd January as there is already a couple in the pipeline but thank you for this - this is a cracking recreation - you have some awesome skills here.
Hi , nice advice. Problem for me is, that this tool 'ZX-Blockeditor' is hard to find, as on most sites the tool is blocked or removed. Who has a valid download link for that one?
I give it in the video description.
I feel like an idiot now ;)
Don't be daft - easy to miss stuff - hope you got sorted.
An update is available that also includes a TAP version now.
Está fantástico.
A great, fun version :)
Absolutely tremendous work, even replicates the "safe spot". Love it.
Thanks!
Brutal!!!!
This is an amazing arcade perfect conversion! 10/10!
Adorei!
Awesome!