Hangly-Man is a hacked clone

Clone (computer science)

In computing, a clone is a hardware or software system that is designed to mimic another system. Compatibility with the original system is usually the explicit purpose of cloning hardware or low-level software such as operating systems...

 of the Pac-Man

Pac-Man

is an arcade game developed by Namco and licensed for distribution in the United States by Midway, first released in Japan on May 22, 1980. Immensely popular from its original release to the present day, Pac-Man is considered one of the classics of the medium, virtually synonymous with video games,...

arcade game. It appeared sometime around 1981, at the height of the Pac-Man craze. Hangly is said to be an Engrish

Engrish

refers to unusual forms of English language usage by native speakers of some East Asian languages. The term itself relates to Japanese speakers' tendency to inadvertently substitute the English phonemes "R" and "L" for one another, because the Japanese language has one alveolar consonant in place...

 corruption of the word hungry. The word only appears in the phrase Bonus Hangly-Man at 10,000 points, which is displayed when a coin is deposited.

Hangly-Man was typically in a Pac-Man cabinet, implying that it was a regular Pac-Man game. When a coin was inserted, the Hangly-Man name would appear on the screen instead of Pac-Man, along with the company name Nittoh. A 1981 date appeared on the screen, but there was no copyright

Copyright

Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...

 notice.

Character names

Hangly-Man used the original Japanese Pac-Man's ghost names:

• The red ghost was Oikake, nicknamed Akabei
• The pink ghost was Machibuse, nicknamed Pinky
• The light blue ghost was Kimagure, nicknamed Aosuke
• The orange ghost was Otoboke, nicknamed Guzuta

Game description

The major difference from the original Pac-Man game is that the first two boards and every even-numbered board after that are slightly altered versions of the original maze. The third board and every odd-numbered board after that are not mazes at all, but contain only the ghost house, the board's boundary outline, and the pills, arranged in straight vertical and horizontal lines. To access these levels, the player must eat four ghosts after eating a power pellet on level one. After that, every power pellet eaten turns the maze black until the power pellet wears off. And then the odd maze appears at level three. On these levels, in addition to the horizontal sideways left–right escape passage, there is also a vertical one connecting the top of the screen and the bottom, which the ghosts cannot enter. If the player moves Pac-Man to anywhere in this passage, and then pushes the joystick to the left or right and holds it; the Pac-Man will become stuck in that position, and the monsters cannot catch him, even if he is far enough out that they can touch him. But as releasing the joystick frees him, one cannot leave the game running with this method. Also, there are no walls anywhere in the maze, so Pac-Man can go anywhere, but the monsters are restricted by the walls depicted in the other levels.

Otherwise, the game-play, sound and graphics are exactly like Pac-Man, except that the original patterns are not possible because the mazes are different. In many copies of the game, an added feature on the even numbered boards was that when an energizer was eaten, the entire maze turned invisible until the energizer wore off. In some, it would remain invisible until the player lost a life.

In addition to this game, there was an older hack version with a different altered maze, sometimes called Scandal, and sometimes called simply Puck-Man, the Japanese name for the original game.

There was even a hack of this hack called Caterpillar Pac-Man made in 1981 by Phi. In this game one plays as a caterpillar

Caterpillar

Caterpillars are the larval form of members of the order Lepidoptera . They are mostly herbivorous in food habit, although some species are insectivorous. Caterpillars are voracious feeders and many of them are considered to be pests in agriculture...

, and the ghosts are replaced by four spiders.

There was also a version where Hangly-Man was replaced by a Popeye

Popeye

Popeye the Sailor is a cartoon fictional character created by Elzie Crisler Segar, who has appeared in comic strips and animated cartoons in the cinema as well as on television. He first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929...

 head.

Ports

Because the game was an illegal bootleg of Pac-Man, Hangly-Man was never ported to home video game systems or computers. However, there have been efforts by some homebrew game developers to port Hangly-Man to classic game consoles such as the Atari 5200

Atari 5200

The Atari 5200 SuperSystem, commonly known as the Atari 5200, is a video game console that was introduced in 1982 by Atari Inc. as a higher end complementary console for the popular Atari 2600...

 , and the Atari 7800

Atari 7800

The Atari 7800 ProSystem, or simply the Atari 7800, is a video game console re-released by Atari Corporation in January 1986. The original release had occurred two years earlier under Atari Inc. The 7800 had originally been designed to replace Atari Inc.'s Atari 5200 in 1984, but was temporarily...

 . as well as the Atari 2600

Atari 2600

The Atari 2600 is a video game console released in October 1977 by Atari, Inc. It is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in...

.

External links

• Caesar.logiqx.com
• Hangly Man at the Video Game Museum
  Video Game Museum
  Video Game Museum, is a video game database with an extensive collection of screenshots from title screens, general gameplay and game endings. It also features a collection of scans of video game covers, boxes, as well as current and old video game print advertisements...
  
  .