Baby Pac-Man

Overview

Baby Pac-Man is a half-pinball, half-video maze game developed and released by Bally for arcades on October 1992.

Based on the Pac-Man arcade game series, Baby Pac-Man is unique for its linked arcade game and pinball game setup. As the titular son of the Pac family, players earn as much score as they can by collecting pellets and dodging ghosts.

The main portion of the game is on the top-half of the cabinet, in which players control the "video game" part with the joystick. It plays similar to the original 1980 game of Pac-Man with some notable differences, namely a different maze layout and no power pellet power-ups to start with. Also new are two tunnels at the bottom of the screen, both of which transition the game over to the small pinball table on the bottom-half of the cabinet. Accomplishing various tasks on this table will spawn power pellets and bonus items in the video game portion, as well as incrementally increase the speed of Baby Pac-Man. Both the ball locks and the ball drain transition the game back to the video game part, with the latter closing off the bottom tunnels until the level is completed.

It is the second and last pinball adaptation of the series by Bally, after the earlier table Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man Pinball. It is one of the few video games in the series developed without involvement by Namco, along with Pac-Man Plus, Jr. Pac-Man, and Professor Pac-Man. As such, it is considered one of the "lost" Pac-Man games, with no mention of it in any official Namco material.