Historic Mind Reading: #284

[Kraklen]

HMR 284: The Mind of an Early Eighties Feminist Vido Game Programmer.

I'mmmm searrrching... searrrching... I see... something... Let's see what Madame Kraklen sees...


Alright, so we've got this new and improved version of Pac Man. It's a better version, but the differences are subtle; basically we just tweaked the gameplay a bit. I think everybody's going to like it. But we can't just release it as "Pacman." That'll upset players on account of all the new patterns. It's not really a sequel, we can't call it Pacman 2. We need something new, Pacman Jr.?

No, we'll make it a girl Pacman! That's great. There's a shortage of female game players, surely this will attract more! We'll make her the love interest for Pacman. Wow, that's really pushing the frontier of video game backstories. What will we call her? PacWoman? Mrs. Pacman? Sounds kind of old. Miss Pacman? Nahh. I got it! We'll call her Ms. Pacman! She'll be the modern 1980's 9-5 can do woman who doesn't have time to be subjugated into sexist gender roles! This is radical! With this kind of marketing girls will represent 50% of the video game market by 1986!

Alright, now for the details. We can't, graphically, have the same yellow disc for the character, that'll just confuse players. Obviously we can have an anatomically correct Ms. Pacman, first off there'll be children playing; secondly, if pornographic NES games have taught us anything, it's that 8-bit graphics simply aren't powerful enough to render the complexity of female genitalia.

No, we need something else. She could be pink? No, that's sexist stereotyping again, plus we've already got a pink ghost. Let's see, the game's already got dark blue, light blue, yellow, orange, red, pink... we're only using 80% of our potential pallet. A brown Ms. Pacman? Will that sell in the South? No, color's the wrong angle. We need, hmm, we need accessories! Awesome! A purse? Nah, sexist. Long hair and a dress? Eh, smurfy tokenism. Earrings? Sexist, plus I hear some men are wearing earrings to nowadays? Isn't that weird? Oh, I got it! We'll give her a bow! A little red bow to stick on top of her cute little head! That's great! It represents the essential aspects of what it means to be a woman, without stereotyping or patronizing! Problem solved.

Ok, now all we have to do is write a few hundred lines of little red bow code. Change one of the ghosts' name from "Clyde" to "Sue." And then we'll be ready to ship several thousand units, both the full sized arcades and the table top versions for bars and pizza joints. We can have the boys down in marketing draw up some promotional art. I'm sure it will look tasteful.



This has been another historical mind reading by the Mysterious Mystic and Grand Phrenologist of the Kooky Klairvoyant Klub- Kraklen: The Hip-Hop Kraken.

Our first ten readers to spot the anachronism will recieve copies of Bubble Bath Babes, for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

[Karenina]

1. I LOVED Pacman!!!

Then I birthed two boys and 6 years later was left in the dust...