What Could Have Been / Pac-Man

A sketch from the scrapped Count Pacula arcade game.

Arcade

• Pac-Man was planned to have an RV-like shelter/trap in the game but due to size limitations, the idea was scrapped.
• Ms. Pac-Man started out as an enhancement kit for Pac-Man called Crazy Otto created by a group of programmers. The titular Otto was Pac-Man with legs and the ghosts were changed into apple-shaped Cartoon Creatures with antenna. Midway bought the rights and made the game into an actual Pac-Man game. Working Titles included Super Pac-Man (Not to be confused with the game of the same name), Pac-Woman, Pac-Girl, Pac-Lady. Pac-ette, Miss Pac-Man, and Mrs. Pac-Man.
• Midway once had plans to create a game called Count Pacula. The game was to be a maze-pinball hybrid, very similar to Baby Pac-Man. Instead of ghosts, Count Pacula is chased by the Pac-Man family (with a new character named "Cousin Six Pac") holding wooden stakes. Upon eating a Power Pellet, Pacula could bite the good Pacs and temporarily turn them gray. When a Pac-family member was in the gray state, they would briefly help Pacula and bite the others. It was scrapped due to its dark and grim nature.
• A scrapped SNES game that would make use of the Exertainment Bike peripheral. The only evidence of the game's existence is from a Nintendo Power article from 1995.
• The Pac-Man Fever video game was originally going to use the song of the same name as the title screen theme. However, Namco did not want to pay the license to use it.
• Plans for a Wipeout-style Pac-Man Game Show was planned but due to lack of network support the idea was scrapped.
• There were plans for a feature film in 2008 but nothing came of it.

Pac-Man World Series

• A next gen Pac-Man World title was meant to come out in 2010 for the PS3 and Xbox 360 tentatively titled Pac-Man World 2010 as you can see from this POC, fitting with the concept of Pac-Man platformers being released on birthday milestones. While it didn't get realized, assets from it, most importantly Pac-Man's redesign, would later be used in Pac-Man Party and Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures.

Pac-Man World

A screen shot of the beta to Pacman Ghost Zone with beta name as well.

• The game was originally going to be a 3D platformer in a similar style to Super Mario 64 with some Tomb Raider elements called Pac-Man Ghost Zone and the story involves a boy who was sucked into a Pac-Man arcade cabinet (after abusing the cabinet and making fun of the game) and becomes Pac-Man after. The game was canceled due to the head of Namco not liking what he saw and fired most of the team making it, meaning they had to start over from scratch.
• An earlier idea was a Namco-based RPG with Namco characters (including Pac-Man as one of the main characters), but this was scrapped when the head of Namco wanted them to do a Pac-Man 3D platformer.
• An early storyboard show that originally, instead of his family (who are based on other Pac-Man games), Pac-Man was going to save some Namco characters like Dig-Dug, Mappy and Whirlo, and Valkyrie (from the Valkyrie Series) excluding Ms. Pac-Man and Professor Pac-Man and to a lesser extent Pooka from Dig-Dug. This was nixed to focus more on the history of Pac-Man. It was his 20th anniversary after all.
• Miru from Pac & Pal was briefly considered to have a role in the game, but did not appear in the final game. She was likely scrapped due to Pac & Pal not being released in North America by that point of the game's release. She was most likely replaced by Pooka seeing that he came from a different Namco game series making him look out-of-place.
• On the lead designers twitter he showed an early design of Toc Man with exposed teeth and bug eyes.
• Originally, Pac-Man was going to use a pac-dot blaster gun to shoot pac-dots but this was obviously shot down by the higher-ups (no pun intended). He still has the ability to shoot pac-dots but instead of a gun, he throws them.
• The game was originally supposed to be ported to the Dreamcast and Nintendo 64, but these ports were canceled for unknown reasons.
• An unused ruins level called Kooky Crypt was planned to be outside or at least the first level of the stage.
• The development team briefly considered hiring James Earl Jones as the voice of Toc-Man as a Casting Gag due to the character initially being a Darth Vader expy, but they nixed this when they found out just how expensive he was to hire.
• Pac-Man was going to have a voice in the game, but the Japanese branch at Namco couldn’t decide on what he should sound like, so the idea was axed. According to designer Scott Rogers, the voice would’ve been used in the ending where Pac-Man would say "I love you Orson" before eating him. After the voice was scrapped, the had him go "Waakka Waakka Waakka", with the aforementioned line being the translation as a subtitle, but time and money scrapped the idea. This was replaced by Pac-Man just chomping Orson after coming out of the robot crying that nobody loves him and begging for mercy. Pac-Man would get to speak in the third game however.

Pac-Man World 2

A scrapped Purple NPC from a early build before it became Pacman World.

• Evidence shows that the game was planned to be much more open and expansive, with screenshots of unknown NPCs like a giant purple ape-like creature proving this theory.
• Originally Pac-Man was going to have combat abilities as evidenced by some unused punch animations found in the game's code that can be put back in via hacking. This idea would be revisited in the sequel, although the kickflip seems to be a leftover remnant of this idea.
• Early Concept Art shows that the bosses were not ghost-themed; the Concept Art shows bosses like a Snow Yeti an Electric Eel, and a Rock Lava Monster. Also, the actual ghost-themed bosses were more based on animals with other mechanical weaponry. The only animal-based boss in the final was the first boss with Clyde's as the others three are just mechanical ghosts plus a warship.
• There was a chiptune-esque remix of the game's motif Dummied Out of the final game.
• The underwater submarine levels were planned to have the sub turn into a mech robot instead of the endless runner-styled swimming levels.

Pac-Man World 3

Concept art for Pacman Adventure that later became Pacman World 3. Art by Don Bluth.

• The game was originally called Pac-Man Adventures and was going to have a much darker storyline (compared to the final version) that involved Pac-Village being bombarded by a terrorist attack, with other characters from the other Namco franchises (including another attempt at representing Dig Dug), and it had artwork and character designs from the legendary animator Don Bluth (possibly around the time he worked on I-Ninja).
• A trademark application from 2004 for the game contains a subtitle “The Elixer of Life”. This hints the game’s plot was going to be very, very different.
• The June 2005 demo featured in Namco Transmission Vol. 3.2 featured a lot of subtle differences, as well as a cutscene that doesn't happen at all in the final game. Loads and loads of unused voice clips were found in the disc as well; the demo itself featured no voice acting.

Pac-Man World Rally

• Comparing the trailer and opening video to the actual game will result in many differences, as several aspects were either changed or taken out from the final product.
• The speedometer HUD was noticeably different as seen in the trailer, as it uses a numeric counter instead of a colored gauge.
• Neither of the opponent sets seen in the trailer and opening video are used in the actual game, no matter which platform.
• A few tracks looked visually different compared to the final product, as seen here, for example.
• Pac-Dots used to have its own counter. Now the only usage of said counter is in a Battle mode involving collecting the most Pac-Dots to win.
• Guardian was originally part of item box roulette. Now it can only be obtained from powersliding and won't appear behind the racer.
• As seen in the opening video, there exists an indicator that helps players know how close their opponents are to them. In the final product, it only appears in the Battle mode.
• An early character selection screen features 12 playable characters (3 of them are locked) instead of 14 (16 in PSP version) in the final product. Also, stats had numerical display instead of using a gauge system. Interestingly enough, the ghosts' portraits are featured in photographs in the Ghost Mansion track probably as Development Gag.
• A version for Xbox was planned at one point, but was ultimately cancelled.

Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

• According to an early trailer, a number of initial ideas were changed in the final product.
• The ghosts were originally going to be sealed in a giant glass orb in the Netherworld as opposed to simply being imprisoned in the Netherworld itself.
• Sir Cumference was originally going to be voiced by Samuel Vincent and also filled The Mentor role for Pac-Man apart from providing him with equipment. Sir Cumference's original voice actor and role instead were given to President Spheros while Sir C became a Ditzy Genius voiced by Ian James Corlett.
• As an addendum to the note above, according to storyboards of said early trailer, Betrayus was originally named "Sir Cular", which sounds similar to Sir Cumference. The similarity between names sparked further speculation that not only Sir Cumference was originally going to fill President Spheros' mentor role, but also fill his role of Betrayus/Sir Cular's brother as well.
• This may explain the discrepancy between Betrayus' Pac-Worlder form and Ghost form. his Pac-Worlder form seen in "Pac to the Future" has a hairstyle resembling President Spheros', but his "hair" in his Ghost form resembles Sir C's instead. If that wasn't weird enough, his Pac-Worlder form seen in a 2D flashback where he was being stripped of his body in "The Adventure Begins, Part I"◊ also has Sir C's hairstyle.
• The berries in the series were originally going to retain being called power pellets as they were in the original game. This was changed to avoid connections to drugs, a common but humorous criticism of Pac-Man. Although if as mentioned above if Pac-Man Party is anything to go by, the power pellets would have been cookies.
• If the second video game based on the show had a better reception and sales, there would've been a third and final season where Pac-Man would find his parents and defeat Betrayus once and for all. However, the failure of that game as well as the positive reception towards Pac-Man reusing his Classic design for his appearance in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U all played a part in the show being Left Hanging.