The following Crazy Otto project is a fan creation. The two cabinets and ROM are not for sale or distribution.

Press and publishers: Images on this page after the "History of Crazy Otto" article depict my project and do not represent the original Crazy Otto. Images downloaded from this page may be used for non-profit personal or educational purposes only. Please include attribution to Brendon Parker and a link to this webpage.

A Brief History

General Computer Corporation was a small corporation formed by students of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the late 1970s. GCC designed 'enhancement kits' which augmented existing arcade games' hardware to add new behavior or features. The kits were marketed to arcade owners with promise of making their existing machines more difficult for players to master, and in turn, improving their profit.

In an unprecedented court case, GCC battled Atari over their unauthorized enhancement kit for Missile Command. Atari claimed copyright infringement and trademark dilution. In the settlement terms, GCC was ordered to obtain permission from the manufacturer of each game they design an enhancement kit for, before marketing the kit.

Pac-Man, the leading game in the arcade scene, was the perfect candidate for GCC to "enhance" next. The result was Crazy Otto, which broke Pac-Man's repetition by introducing new mazes, new characters, difficult monster AI, and various other mechanics. As a consequence of the Atari settlement, GCC needed to obtain permission before releasing the kit. This time, from Bally Midway, the company in charge of Pac-Man in the US. Unknown to GCC, Bally Midway had grown impatient waiting on Namco in Japan to finish the official Pac-Man sequel (which would be 1982's Super Pac-Man).

Impressed by the gameplay, Midway execs recognized Crazy Otto as the Pac-Man sequel they'd been waiting for. Rather than authorize GCC to release the Crazy Otto kit, the company offered to adopt Crazy Otto to release in an official format. No longer limited by trademark, the generic-by-design characters could be reworked into official ones. Midway contracted GCC to finalize the game for release, consulting Namco along the way. After an intense development, the game transformed into Ms. Pac-Man, and released to arcades in 1982.

Only a few Crazy Otto circuit boards were built for demonstration, and a dedicated Crazy Otto cabinet was never produced. The original Crazy Otto programming is kept private due to a complex royalty deal between Namco, GCC, and now AtGames (it's a long story). These factors tossed poor Otto into oblivion, and inspired my project.

Crazy Otto pictured in TIME magazine, mislabeled Pac-Man, 1981

Early engineering circuit for the Crazy Otto kit.

Reviving Crazy Otto

To shed light on this elusive game, I designed and built a functioning Crazy Otto machine! Over the course of seven years, this involved reverse-engineering Ms. Pac-Man Z80 code to turn it back into Crazy Otto, designing unique cabinet artwork in the iconic Ms. Pac-Man style, and restoring original Pac-Man cabinets.

The machine represents an alternate timeline:
"What if Crazy Otto was released and Ms. Pac-Man never came to be?"

This project made news in the arcade community, the Tracy Press, and Motherboard Magazine! In July 2015, I gave a presentation on Crazy Otto alongside Steve Golson, an original GCC developer.

Read on for a detailed recount of my process!

My Project

Reviving Crazy Otto

To shed light on this elusive game, I designed and built a functioning Crazy Otto machine! Over the course of seven years, this involved reverse-engineering Ms. Pac-Man Z80 code to turn it back into Crazy Otto, designing unique cabinet artwork in the iconic Ms. Pac-Man style, and restoring original Pac-Man cabinets.

The machine represents an alternate timeline: "What if Crazy Otto was released and Ms. Pac-Man never came to be?"

This project made news in the arcade community, the Tracy Press, and Motherboard Magazine! In July 2015, I gave a presentation on Crazy Otto alongside Steve Golson, an original GCC developer.

Read on for a detailed recount of my process!

Completed Crazy Otto project