Pac-Man Pocket Player

Pac-Man Pocket Player
Developers: Namco, shiru8bit, Piko Interactive Publishers: My Arcade, dreamGEAR Platforms: Unlicensed Genesis, Plug & Play Released internationally: August 2018 This game has unused modes / minigames. This game has unused graphics. This game has debugging material.

A 3-in-1 handheld featuring Pac-Man, Pac-Mania, and Pac-Panic (better known as Pac-Attack). It's built off of crazily hacked-up Genesis hardware unlike the following Pocket Player systems, which were all Famiclones instead.

Service Menu

In Pac-Man, a service menu can be accessed by holding A+C when starting the game - however, this is normally impossible on the physical unit, which only has A and B buttons. Running the game in MAME 0.248 or later allows enabling the C button in the Machine Configuration menu.

The "PACMAN" option adjusts the amount of lives, while "EXTRA" controls the points required to earn an extra life. The "VIDEO" option, interestingly, enables two unused video modes, one of which has the screen oriented vertically.

6x6 Horizontal	7x7 Horizontal (used by console)	8x8 Vertical

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Unused Games

The Pac-Man Pocket Player seems to be built off of a bootleg 202-in-1, to the point where multiple pirated games and other programs are lurking in its code. While none of them are accessible on the device, it's still rather shocking they were left in the final product. The unused ROMs are as follows:

• Unknown data, possibly another xxx-in-1 menu (0x200000, 256k)
• "Sample program" using data from UWOL: Quest for Money (0x240000, 128k)
• Columns (0x260000, 128k)
• Fatal Labyrinth (0x280000, 128k)
• Blockout (0x2a0000, 128k)
• Flicky (0x2c0000, 128k)
• Shove It! (0x2e0000, 128k)
• Modified Space Invaders 90, featuring menu data for both the 202-in-1 and the Pac-Man 3-in-1 (0x300000, 256k)

Columns, Blockout, and Space Invaders 90 have their copyrights removed, while the other games have them intact.

Revisional Differences

On the back of the handheld, there is a sticker explaining how to start the included version of Pac-Man. My Arcade later decided this still wasn't apparent enough, and later versions added this splash screen stating the same instructions before the game starts.