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Crazy Otto

Unreleased Arcade Video game published 43 years ago by GCC

Not listed in MAME yet

Crazy Otto screenshot

Crazy Otto © 1981 General Computer Corp.

TRIVIA

During the summer of 1981, General Computer of Massachusetts, known for making "Food Fight" and "Quantum" for Atari as a settlement for producing a "Missile Command" hack had also made a game called Crazy Otto. This game was intended to be sold as an enhancement kit for Pac-Man cabinets. The main character Crazy Otto had legs and blue eyes. Also the monsters have blue feet and antennae that bob up and down. New game play, mazes, music, and sounds were developed. Several new bonus characters (fruit) were added. Otto and his female counterpart appeared in three new animations, culminating in the arrival of JUNIOR, a baby Crazy Otto.

In October 1981 this game was licensed to Midway, who owned the North American rights to produce Pac-Man. With Midway producing the game, the original Pac-Man character and name could be used. At first the game was called Super Pac-Man, but eventually the decision was made to use the female character as the protagonist, resulting in Ms. Pac-Man.

The only differences between Crazy Otto and the final production Ms. Pac-Man are the characters themselves and related text strings. Game play, mazes, colors, fruits, sounds, music, animations are unchanged from original GCC Crazy Otto. Also the marquee attract mode was added to include the Midway logo and copyright string.

This game was more commonly known as "Pac-Man with Legs", it appeared in a Time Magazine article about "Pac-Man" fever spreading around the US.

Three 'Crazy Otto' machines were tested in Boston and Chicago. The highest known recorded score at the event was 62,510.

UPDATES

Information shared regarding the known prototypes indicates they are dated from 10/12/81, 10/20/81 and 10/29/81. Also two prototype versions of Super Pac-Man, one with old Pac-Man monsters and one with new Crazy Otto monsters are both dated 10/29/81.

Early prototypes - those dated 10/12/81 and 10/20/81 - do not use the Ms. Pac-Man code patch scheme outlined above. Instead, all four Pac-Man ROMs are replaced, and one or two additional ROMs are provided at addresses above 0x8000.

Later prototypes - those dated 10/29/81 - use the patch hardware, however the latch set/clear function is not implemented. Furthermore the ROM encryption bit flip is not used.