Ever since the notorious 1982 Atari 2600 release, Namco's classic Pac-Man has suffered an innumerable variety of lousy ports. The goal of this exercise was to develop a version of the game worthy of the original, and to do so using the rich feature set of the latest version of HTML. I chose HTML5 because it feels to me like the future of the Internet, despite all the proprietary technologies coming onto the market. The result is Pac-5.

The graphics for Pac-5 were taken from the ROM version of Pac-Man as played on the superb MAME emulator. This gives the game an authentic look, though the code was built from scratch.

After putting the finishing touches on the first workable version of Pac-5, I'm quite pleased with the results. I think it looks and feels more or less like the real thing. Moreover, the program is flexible enough that I've been able to produce additional mazes to play with relative ease. Right now all the mazes from Ms. Pac-Man are included, as well as the maze from the bootleg Hangly-Man game, and also a couple more that I designed myself.

HTML5 is not implemented perfectly on any browser, though things are much better than they used to be. Google Chrome and Firefox 4 offer the best experience, though both still have audio issues. After tweaking the program a bit it even works well on old versions of Firefox. The frame rate is adjustable, though 60fps should work on most new computers, or those that are less than a few years old. If you notice the game running slow, try a lower rate and see what you get.

Click here to jump right in and play. Click here to read about browser compatibilty issues. Or else browse around the site, and check back frequently for updates.

Last updated: May 9, 2011