Pac-Man Reality Series In The Works

[Alidar Jarok]

If it's like Wipeout, it's not a reality series, it's just a game show.

Yeah, pretty much. I can see this as genuinely stupid fun. Ideally, they should go as low budget as possible and not hype it up. That way, it wouldn't have to live up to any hype and it'll be something to watch when you're bored. If they take themselves at all seriously, it'll stop being fun.

 

[Jack Bauer]

If it's like Wipeout, it's not a reality series, it's just a game show.

I guess that if a game show requires any kind of physical action to be performed then the tv industry considers it to be reality tv. If it's just people answering questions then it's a game show. it's Hollywood lingo.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I don't disagree that it's one of the best known franchises and characters in gaming history, but a reality show?

I don't think "reality show" is the best label for it. It sounds like it's simply a game show, but these days the label "reality show" has subsumed game shows in people's minds.

As you point out, the concept itself has already been successful without the Pac-Man branding, so the branding just seems pointless in this case.

It's not pointless, because producing TV shows costs money. What better way to get the funds to make a show than if the whole show is one big commercial for somebody's product?

There have been TV game shows based on other kinds of game before, such as Concentration, Pictionary, Trivial Pursuit, Yahtzee, Scattergories, Mad Libs, and Scrabble. The Hasbro-owned cable channel The Hub has Family Game Night, which includes game-show-ized versions of a number of Hasbro board games. Heck, there are two game shows based on tic-tac-toe, Hollywood Squares and Tic-Tac-Dough.

Well, I hope you're right. Your description of it actually sounds a lot better than the press release, so maybe there's some hope that it will be good. You're right about the term. It's more of a gameshow in the same way that American Gladiator was, but these days, the game show almost seems to be a sub-category to the reality show, or maybe it's the other way around. It'd be fun if they could get random people from the audience to be the ghosts.

Never heard of the Hasbro channel, but it doesn't really surprise me. Btw, you forgot the short lived Monopoly game show.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^A cool fake Pac-Man movie trailer on YouTube:

Eh hem.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

^ The CW turning Casablanca into a modern, hip TV show with a reimagined high school setting?

And vampires! You forgot vampires.

 

[FPAlpha]

The people pitching this to the studio must have been one hell of a presenter team.. or they hired some hookers.

Equally.. those who gave the green light should be examined however the state of modern TV is such to warrant this. People will watch any shit.

 

[Christopher]

Equally.. those who gave the green light should be examined however the state of modern TV is such to warrant this. People will watch any shit.

People always assume that things like this are a "modern" trend when they've actually been the norm from the beginning. There has always been trashy, disposable TV for as long as there's been TV. And before then, there was plenty of lowbrow radio, theater, etc. Hell, which is more degraded, a Pac-Man game show or the bear baiting that was popular in Elizabethan times? In many ways, the trashy entertainment we have today is a lot more civilized than the trashy entertainment of past eras.

 

[scnj]

Easy. Stick someone with crazy issues in a maze and have a bunch of guys chase him while he picks up and eats sugar cubes. Then he finds a larger sugar cube laced with LSD, causing him to flip out and try to eat his pursuers.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Better yet, do the movie Cube as a reality show.

 

[Aragorn]

Survivor: South Central would trump them all!

 

[Itisnotlogical]

It seems like something that an indy studio might make, like Threadbanger or Indy Mogul. Except, instead of being humorous, as it would be if produced by said studios, it's going to be lame... as it would be produced by a major studio with a million-dollar budget.