Puckman Pockimon

Puckman Pockimon
Developer	Genie
Console	Arcade
Date	2000

Puckman Pockimon, also known as Jing Ling Jia Zu (精靈家族, roughly translates to "creature family") in Chinese, is a pirated arcade made by Genie.

Overview

File:PuckmanPockimonGameplay.jpg

Puckman Pockimon's gameplay.

The game is almost identical to Pac-Man, with Pikachu as player 2 and different maze variations. The only other "Pokémon" part is some of the ghosts are replaced with the Pokémon Caterpie and Munchlax. Also, when you die, you have the option of respawning if you insert another coin; no progress will be lost.

Various powerups appear during the game, some of which include the ying-yang symbol which resets the current level's progress.

For every board that is completed, the player will be shown a digitized photo of an Asian girl, out of sixteen available. Once all sixteen are shown in order, the game loops back to the first one.

Gallery

Puckman Pockimon cabinet.

Instruction card. Note the bad grammar and "GENIE 2000", the creator of Puckman Pockimon

Flyer for the game. Note the Chinese logo. This version also has a IBS copyright, while it was Genie themselves who distributed the English version of the game.

An example of an intermission.

Size comparison between a maze in Puckman Pokimon and the original Pac-Man.

Puckman Pockimon Chinese title screen.png

Chinese version title screen, displaying "精靈家族", "GENIE 2000", and an 2000 "IBS CO.Ltd" copyright.

Trivia

• The game has many connections to Pocket Monster on the Famicom/NES, as it uses the same dancing sprite from it's ending when the second player is absent and there is at least one credit in the machine. The rabbit-like enemy from that game also appears in Puckman Pockimon.
• The game may be incomplete, as the game ends after an aquatic-themed level with no boss or hard level.
• The song played in the tutorial is also used as the 3rd stage theme of the bootleg A Bug's Life (Mega Drive version).
• So far, there are two known English and Chinese language versions of the game, both of which are emulated on MAME. The English version is under the name "Puckman Pockimon (set 1)", while the Chinese version is under "Puckman Pockimon (set 2)" according to the MAME directory. The Chinese version also seems to be distributed by a company known as "IBS". An alternate ROM set named as "Puckman Pockimon (set 3)" contains yet another company name called "Sun Mixing Co".
• The score freezes at exactly 500,000 points, which can be achieved in a full single-player playthrough.
• The Chinese title "精靈家族" appears to be derived from the then-current Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese title for Pokemon at the time, which is "寵物小精靈/宠物小精灵".