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Pac-Man Reality Series In The Works

Jack Bauer

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You gotta be kidding me! A reality tv series based on a computer game? When will this craze end? It looks like we're scraping the bottom of the barrel now with reality tv. The bubble's got to burst some time...right?

http://www.deadline.com/2011/01/pac-man-reality-series-in-the-works/

Waka waka waka! Pac-Man, is headed to reality TV. Merv Griffin Entertainment has teamed with leading game maker Namco Bandai Games America, which owns the Pac-Man brand, to develop an unscripted series based on the hugely popular video game. This marks the first major foray into TV for Pac-Man whose only previous TV presence was a short-lived animated series in the early 1980s. The project also coincides with the 30th anniversary of the best-selling game and 1980s pop culture icon.


The Pac-Man reality series is envisioned as a "big, crazy Wipeout-type event with a lot of energy," said Merv Griffin's president of TV Roy Bank. "The idea we have is to take what Pac-Man is and bring it to life, to bring what is essentially the world's biggest game of tag to television." Bank is executive producing the project, which is now being taken out to the broadcast networks, with David Russo, who brought the idea to him.
 
They compared it to "Wipeout" but with pursuers. So, what, this will be a really expensive game of.....tag? Hardly sounds like riveting television to me. :vulcan:
 
Real-life Pac-Man is just a bunch of pill poppers who have the munchies for fruit and hallucinate about ghosts chasing after them. :)
 
This just proves my theory that a majority of reality series are really developed/produced in other realities. ;) I consider it the most logical explanation. :D
 
You gotta be kidding me! A reality tv series based on a computer game? When will this craze end? It looks like we're scraping the bottom of the barrel now with reality tv. The bubble's got to burst some time...right?

Reality TV was scraping the bottom of the bottom of the originality barrel.

What's lower than the bottom of the barrel?
 
^ The CW turning Casablanca into a modern, hip TV show with a reimagined high school setting?
 
If it's like Wipeout, it's not a reality series, it's just a game show.

Or is Pac-Man going to be forced to live in a loft with the ghosts between events?
 
Sounds like the worst idea ever in terms of a reality series.

Oh, hardly. A game show where people run around a large maze and try to avoid each other? Silly, yes, but refreshingly harmless compared to the kind of reality show where the contestants are encouraged to mistreat and deceive each other and stab each other in the back in order to win a competition, or the kind that's about invading people's privacy or using their real-life misery as fodder for entertainment.

I mean, really, isn't football essentially a game of tag to an extent? Or baseball? Lots of sports include one player trying to avoid being touched/intercepted by other players. I don't see how this is fundamentally different. Except that it has the twist that if the pursued player comes into possession of the right type of "ball," he becomes the pursuer and can tag out the other players. I can see it working as a game of strategy, action, speed, skill, etc.

And it's not like there haven't been maze-based game shows before. Although I guess few people remember The Money Maze, a short-lived '70s game show hosted by George Clooney's father Nick. But apparently there was a successful British game show called The Crystal Maze.

Besides, Pac-Man is one of the most enduring successful computer games ever made. People still play it today. So it must have some genuine appeal as a game. Why couldn't it be appealing as a physical sport as well?
 
pacman.gif
 
Sounds like the worst idea ever in terms of a reality series.

Oh, hardly. A game show where people run around a large maze and try to avoid each other? Silly, yes, but refreshingly harmless compared to the kind of reality show where the contestants are encouraged to mistreat and deceive each other and stab each other in the back in order to win a competition, or the kind that's about invading people's privacy or using their real-life misery as fodder for entertainment.

I mean, really, isn't football essentially a game of tag to an extent? Or baseball? Lots of sports include one player trying to avoid being touched/intercepted by other players. I don't see how this is fundamentally different. Except that it has the twist that if the pursued player comes into possession of the right type of "ball," he becomes the pursuer and can tag out the other players. I can see it working as a game of strategy, action, speed, skill, etc.

And it's not like there haven't been maze-based game shows before. Although I guess few people remember The Money Maze, a short-lived '70s game show hosted by George Clooney's father Nick. But apparently there was a successful British game show called The Crystal Maze.

Besides, Pac-Man is one of the most enduring successful computer games ever made. People still play it today. So it must have some genuine appeal as a game. Why couldn't it be appealing as a physical sport as well?


I meant in terms of the concept. Sure, the idea of the maze is neat and kind of like American Gladiators in a way, but marrying that with Pac-Man? I don't disagree that it's one of the best known franchises and characters in gaming history, but a reality show? It just tells me that TV producers are quick to make anything to cash in. 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.
 
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, at least it's a Game show. I was already afraid of news like "Steven Spielberg presents: Pacman, the drama series, written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, starring Kiefer Sutherland, pilot directed by David Fincher."
 
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