Review: Jakks Pacific’s Pac-Man Gold TV Game (Direct-To-TV)

Since the review of the original Pac-Man DTV in the magazine GO64!, I decided I want my hands on this one. But despite looking and asking around, I found no source that would send it to abroad USA.

Finally, I found a store on Ebay that would ship to everywhere – Thank you!

This version is the the gold version of the Pac-Man stick which means they are 8 games included instead of just one which gives you more value for your money!

Included are Pac-Man, Pac-Man PLUS, Super Pac-Man, Pac & Pal, Galaxian, Dig Dug, New Rally-X and Bosconian.

I don’t think I have to explain the games, most people will know them, especially Pac-Man. anway, the best thing of this gold edition is the casing which looks in the final retail version pretty different compared to the pics you see everywhere around the American online shops.

The most important for me is a 100% rebuild of the original arcades hardware wise.

I have compared the music of New Rally-X with a recording and I have to confess, they sound equal to me, so the hardware appears pretty much re-build.

It uses an AV-connector to your TV. (That’s why it is Direct-To-TV…). Since these Jakks Pacific TV Games are not released over here, you cannot get them in PAL, only NTSC. However most newer TVs can handle NTSC on the AV (or if you have none, on the scart connector with an adapter) connector.

According to Wikipedia, the joystick’s games are:

“… the games appear to be custom hardware but most are based on the original with modified or re-written Roms.”

Looks like they have done a nice job! With one exception: Bosconion, which is a 8-way game but the stick only goes 4 ways!

The games were also released seperately (each game in 1 stick) and with Bosconian they made the error actually twice 🙁

But the quality of the stick is pretty nice, it steers accurately and it’s rock solid (it’s a metal stick, try to break it, you probably won’t succeed!).

Typical for USA products is, that you only get 3 months (90 days) warranty.

Also special is, that this gold edition here even features a battery for buffering your highscores for future reference, it also has a reset switch which allows you to pause the game or leave it (they call it “Menu” button).

Enclosed is also an extensive manual for covering all eventualities you could have when trying to connect your stick to the TV. (pretty outstanding try, very nice of them!), also instructions for each game are enclosed.

Compared to other DTVs, this one here has a crystal clear sound and a brilliant video output on the TV, guess this stands for good quality control and pretty skilled hardware engineers.

I want to thank Jakks Pacific, especially Joy who just told me after my purchase that they now know a guy to handle purchases from abroad USA. You may contact me or them if you wanna know who to get in touch with.

Special thanks also to Mirla who did the shipping promptly and wrapped it nicely!

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