Professor Pac-Man is a quiz arcade game that was produced by Bally Midway and is the seventh title in the Pac-Man series of games, which was released in August 1983. It is also the last of only seven games from Bally Midway Manufacturing to run on their Midway Astrocade hardware. Only 400 cabinets were made; approximately 300 of these were returned to the manufacturer and converted to Pac-Land cabinets the following year. Description Designed to capitalize on the perceived quiz game niche, Professor Pac-Man presented simple visual puzzles, and required the players (or "pupils", as they are called by the game) to solve each within a short time limit. Despite the game's usage of Namco's popular Pac-Man character, Professor Pac-Man did not fare very well in the arcades, due to its slow pace and its abandonment of the famous maze-based gameplay that made the previous titles so popular. Gameplay The game is for one player or two (in a two-player game, the player who is the first to answer a question correctly receives its points) and consists of answering multiple-choice questions before the time runs out. The timer is the original Pac-Man, eating a row of pellets. The more pellets left when the players answer correctly, the higher the scores awarded. As the questions progress, Pac-Man eats the pellets more quickly. Bonus questions are awarded after a player answers between two and six questions correctly on his or her first try. The game ends when a player runs out of fruits (the game's equivalent of lives, which also serve as a difficulty indicator). Fruits are lost for a wrong answer on a regular question (but not a bonus question), and fruits can also be earned for answering a bonus question correctly (but not lost if answered wrong). Midway had also originally planned to release three different versions of this game: Family (appropriate for all ages, but geared towards younger players), Public (appropriate for general audiences, but geared towards arcades and bars), and Prizes (for casinos). There were also to be new question upgrades every three months to keep people from memorizing the answers, but the game never caught on. Although most of the questions have nothing to do with Pac-Man, certain questions (asking: "How many left/right turns to the fruit?") show the original Pac-Man maze (with a regular wall in the place of the ghost regenerator) and a line of