Pac-Man: The Complete First Season

Best item

I am finally glad that we have yet another great 80's classic cartoon from one the most popular video games of all time and produced by one of the best animation companies of all time.Warner Archive at least got all of this series complete and on DVD. They also got Dragon's lair and let's hope Supercade will come too.POSITIVES: This is season 1 complete and unedited as it originally aired, it even includes the "Pac-Mania" short bumpers. It does not include the Christmas Special or Season 2, but luckily that was released on another DVD you can also buy.NEGATIVES: Like many early & mid 80's cartoons they were shot on 35mm film, transferred to tape and edited for production. For some strange reason the whole industry thinks that by doing a "new film" transfer that the DVD will be so much better quality. Sadly, this is not always the case.Just like with other 80's cartoons (G.I. Joe, Transformers, Dragon's Lair) this appears to be a new film to digital transfer, which would be OK if they only knew how to remaster it correctly!This suffers from the common remastering problem of the "contrast" being incorrectly set, so you can't tell the difference between the "red" ghost and the "orange" ghost...it's outright set way off! So compared to the original analog broadcast tapes (still shown on Boomerang) the remastering is sub par.To make matters worse, as with many "new transfers", there were missing scenes from the 35mm film, so those were simply replaced with the original scenes taken from the analog broadcast tapes. The problem is they don't match at all and appear out of place since they don't suffer from the poor contrast settings, they actually look better. So it's a standard "mixed bag" that we have commonly come to accept for 80's cartoons, on that part.Time Warner could have spent more time on correcting the contrast and other colors that are off, or just used the original tapes which would have been better in my opinion, but this was a low budget job and that is what you should expect.MENU/EXTRAS: BIG silly FBI warning, very basic menu and no extras.This is a standard burned DVD-R (with CSS copy protection which is useless) created On-Demand, which is not as good as a DVD ROM but far better then silly digital downloads wrapped in DRM that you can't use on DVD (i.e. Smurfs).OVERALL: Buy it for sure, esp. if you want the full season and if you have the time and knowledge, you can easily fix the video contrast yourself if it's that important to you.

this was one of my favorite Saturday morning cartoons. dvd's arrived in good condition with no problems.

It's here, the original 1980s cartoon based on the then-wildly popular arcade game, Pac-Man!! Produced by Hanna-Barbera, the show brings to life many elements of this game as well as its successors, Ms. Pac-Man and Baby Pac-Man.All three characters - Pac-Man, Pepper (Ms. Pac-Man), and Pac-Baby - and their pets Chomp-Chomp and Sour Puss pull together as a family as they fend off Pac-Land's five Ghost Monsters: Clyde, Pinky, Inky, Blinky and Sue. (Pinky, Inky and Blinky appeared in both the Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man video games; Clyde appeared in Pac-Man only, replaced by Sue in Ms. Pac-Man.) The Ghost Monsters - each with their own unique mob-like personality - work for Mezmaron, whose mission is to seize the power pellets, Pac-Land's power source. Most of the show's plots center on these battles.The first season of Pac-Man, which did not feature Super-Pac or Pac-Man's nephew P.J., aired on the ABC network from 1982 to 1983 and contained 13 episodes. Their titles are listed below, along with their original air dates.Episode 1 (25 Sep 1982)Presidential Pac-Nappers / Picnic in Pac-LandEpisode 2 (2 Oct 1982)The Great Pac-Quake / Hocus-Pocus Pac-ManEpisode 3 (9 Oct 1982)Southpaw Packy / Pac-Baby PanicEpisode 4 (16 Oct 1982)Pacula / Trick or ChompEpisode 5 (23 Oct 1982)Super Ghosts / The Pac-Man in the MoonEpisode 6 (30 Oct 1982)Journey to the Center of Pac-Land / Invasion of the Pac-PupsEpisode 7 (6 Nov 1982)Sir Chomp-A-Lot / The Day the Forest DisappearedEpisode 8 (13 Nov 1982)Neander-Pac-Man / Backpackin' PackyEpisode 9 (20 Nov 1982)The Abominable Pac-Man / The Bionic Pac-WomanEpisode 10 (27 Nov 1982)Chomp-Out at the O.K. Corral / Once upon a ChompEpisode 11 (4 Dec 1982)The Pac-Love Boat / The Great Power-Pellet RobberyEpisode 12 (11 Dec 1982)A Bad Case of the Chomps / Goo-Goo at the ZooEpisode 13 (18 Dec 1982)The Pac-Mummy / Nighty NightmaresWith Pac-Man: The Complete First Season in your collection, you can relive the days when Pac-Man fever was sweeping the nation. In addition, the cartoon is good clean fun the whole family can enjoy.

Let me set the stage a little. It's late December 1980. I'm just turning two. Pac-man is less than a year old. The two of us seem destined to grow up together. My favorite gift that year comes not from my loving father or mother but from an aunt and uncle I will see little of growing up. It's a wooden Pac-man toy with painted wheels, and I love it. It will quickly become my favorite toy, and remains the only thing I still own from two years old. It seems strange then, tragic even, that I never knew this show existed as a kid! Where was I? All I can figure is that He-Man must have been on at the same time. (Seems I had a thing for charactors with -Man in their names..) It's really a shame, because if I had seen this as a child I might find it more viewable as an adult. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong about the show... but then there's nothing really right about it either. You get the idea that Hanna Barbera figured the Pac name alone would draw kids in and they didn't need to focus on story telling. The show has very little humor, no witty one liners or zingy comebacks, nothing quotable. The charactors are lifeless and bland. There are some flashes of genius, like the Pac family going to the drive in to watch video games (kinda' a Galaga meets Star Wars) but they are few and far between. Not even my kids got into this one, and they both like Pac-Man and 80's cartoons. Still, it gets four stars for simply being a Pac-Man cartoon. It's not bad for what it is. It's just not great, either.

This item arrived as scheduled and is being enjoyed as a gift.

awesome cartoon!