<pacman> Why Spacey whyyy <blinky>
So I've decided to go for a million points on the original Pac-man. Factory speed and 3+1. A game I (and planty of others here) have bitched about before.
It's boring. It's slow. The maze never changes. Grouping the ghosts is a thankless, ball-achingly tedious, time-consuming undertaking.
And it is.
But reading Erstaz Cats's utterly compelling Pac investigation:
https://perfectpacman.com/fraud/
and his account of his attempts to get perfect:
https://perfectpacman.com/2022/11/13/quest-for-perfect-score-1/
got me firing it up and thinking about trying to learn a pattern or 2. It feels very naughty to me to be beating the game with all this pre-planning.
Then I went to a couple of events at Base Arcade Belfast:
https://linktr.ee/basearcade
They have an original Pac-man cabaret with both the controls and a glowing CRT in tip-top condition (though cruelly with no extra life at 10000). It was just magical playing the real thing. And executing a couple of patterns successfully on the original hardware felt even more naughty :D
<pacman> Patterns ftw <blinky>
Watching the real masters do it with beautiful, elegant, risky-looking patterns convinced me it's really the only way to go.
Two examples (both courtesy of David Race's YouTube channel):
David himself:
And Rick Fothergill:
The play is just gorgeous to watch - total domination of the monsters, suicidal-looking moves, the triumphant bloops od 200, 400, 800, 1600 - magnificent.
David's 9th key pattern where he gets the 2nd key while booeying Inky is just tremendous.
But I've never had the memory or motor skills to keep more than 1 pattern in my head at once, never mind more than 20.
<pacman> Easy patterns from heaven <blinky>
So a youtube recommendation popped up out of the blue a couple of months ago:
The absolute genius of this is you can get to the end with just 3 patterns (ignoring most of the ghosts).
Pattern 1 takes you from the Cherry to the 2nd Peach.
Pattern 2 (incredibly) from the 1st Apple to the 8th key.
Pattern 3 9th key and beyond
I think it's Pac-legend Neil Chapman responsible for this but I can't find a name on the channel.
So for the moment I'm basically stealing these first 2 amazing Pac Strats patterns and then using my own 9th key pattern until I die 4 times because I'm not that good at this.
<pacman> Going backwards <blinky>
I wanted to at least make my own 9th key pattern so I'm not completely using someone else's hard work.
It took 2 - 3 weeks of relentless trial and mostly error, but finally woooooooo:
(https://i.imgur.com/Amxqvx9.png)
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1932646326
I'm currently about halfway to perfect Cherry and 1st Peach patterns; I'll post them here and any others when they're done.
<pacman> Call in and abuse me <blinky>
The next Base Arcade event is on October 21st, so up until then I'll be streaming my high score attempts and pattern failures on my Twitch:
https://www.twitch.tv/qaop_spaceman
My goal is to turn up at the arcade and hopefully get a least a quarter of a million.
I got a c-hair away <Allen> this afternoon on the sofa in my underpants, wasn't recording but I sent the ROM files to Namco and they said it was legit <Billy>
(https://i.imgur.com/icw870O.png)
Fingers crossed a million won;t be far away, but we've heard that before <Allen>
I'd love it if some of y'all could pop into the streamz, even for a couple of minutes, to heckle, abuse, insult, cajole, castigate, mock, or encourage me on my pointless, draining mission! :D
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