8 Embarrassing Video Game TV Adaptations You Won't Believe Got Made
2. Pac-Man
One of the main concerns about adapting characters who don't speak into TV roles is that in this transition you'll lose a lot of their charm by having them dole out a load of bad dialogue. Somehow the Pac-Man TV series managed to go even further by making the loveable pellet muncher into an absolute a**hole.
From start to finish on each of the 40 odd episodes, Pac-Man struts his stuff with a massively smug smile on his face and mercilessly butchers the bumbling Ghost Monster squad without flinching, and somehow we as an audience were meant to side with him.
If you think I'm being hyperbolic then just take the episode Journey To The Centre of Pac-Land, in which the opening segments show one of the ghosts begging for Pac-Man to show him mercy after his friends have been eaten by crocodiles. The yellow bellied bastard says, "I'll do you one better, I'll show you mustard" before squirting the condiment on the poor spectre and then eating him. And this is our hero.
The show, aside from the casual vore based violence was pretty par for the course in the '80s: bland animation that sought to show the bare minimum of motion to maximise the cost effectiveness, a plot that revolved around Pac-Man and his family thwarting an evil wizard's attempts to take over the world, and voice acting that felt like you were listening to members of Goodfellas who didn't get call backs. It was pretty dire.