Professor Pac-Man

Professor Pac-Man is a quiz arcade game that was released by Bally Midway in 1983. Like Ms. Pac-Man, Pac-Man Plus and Jr. Pac-Man before it, it was created without the authorization of Namco, the original creators of the Pac-Man series. This instalment did not fare very well in the arcades due to its slow pace and abandonment of the famous maze-based gameplay which had made the previous titles so popular. It was written in the FORTH programming language.

Bally Midway had originally planned three different versions of the game: Family (for younger players), Public (for bars), and Prizes (for casinos). There were also to be software revisions at quarterly intervals to keep people from memorizing the answers. Unfortunately for them, however, the game was almost an immediate flop and most operators only had it hanging around for as long as it took to get it shipped back to the distributor. Only 400 cabinets were ever made, all of the "Public" variety; approximately 300 of these were shipped back to the manufacturer and converted to Pac-Land cabinets the following year. It is thought that only a very small number of Professor Pac-Man cabinets still survive today.