RSS
With the early 1980’s really ushering in the videogame, it wasn’t long before the traditional boardgame manufacturers began to worry about losing people to this new fangled technology. As it turns out it doesn’t seem like they had to worry, there’s room still for both forms of entertainment, but that didn’t stop MB Games being rather clever and converting a selection of much loved videogames into a boardgame equivalent.
Games such as Donkey Kong and Zaxxon (I wonder how many of you remember that one now?) were converted to a piece of cardboard and some plastic counters, but by far the best game to come out of this process was the Pacman boardgame. The playing board represented the maze which Pacman and the ghosts roamed around. It had lots of little holes drilled in it where white plastic balls could be placed, representing the dots that Pacman ate. Yellow balls were also provided to represent the powerpills that allowed Pacman to eat the ghosts.
The best part of the game by far were the player counters, each shaped like a Pacman but in four different colours. The playing pieces could actually eat the marbles off the board, so it was just like the videogame in that respect. The game also came with two plastic ghosts who started off in the centre of the board and were also moved by the player.
