In the game, when players return to Pac-house, Man’s they are no longer greeted by Ms Pac-Man, but rather by a new figure who wears a pink hat, as was discovered by a Twitter user. In the words of Ryan Silberman, who contributed to the book Pac-Man: Birth of an Icon, the new character will feature in the future Pac-Man Museum+ and will be known as ‘Pac-Mom.’
It appears as though the new Ms Pac-Man sprite is the latest attempt by Bandai Namco to keep the character out of its games, at least until the company can resolve a long-running legal fight over the character’s royalties. Ms Pac-Man has been replaced with a new character in a new Arcade Archives port of Pac-Land, most likely as a result of an ongoing dispute over royalty rights.
Notably, the original Ms Pac-Man game was not developed by Namco. It was originally a modded version of a game called Crazy Otto, which was created by a group of programmers at the General Computer Corporation (GCC) in the United States and released in 1989. In order to release a sequel in North America, Midway, which had the rights to distribute Pac-Man in the region, needed a game from Namco. Since Namco had not provided one, Midway agreed to purchase the rights to Crazy Otto from GCC, with the two companies working together to transform it into Ms Pac-Man.
When Namco’s licencing agreement with Midway was cancelled in 1984 (reportedly due to the fact that it did not approve the choice to release Ms Pac-Man), the rights to the Ms Pac-Man moniker were transferred to the Namco Entertainment Corporation. GCC, on the other hand, had already committed to a licencing agreement with Midway, which meant that it would receive royalties every time Ms Pac-Man was played.
Despite the fact that a new royalties agreement between Bandai Namco and GCC was signed in 2008, there are still some royalties difficulties that have not been resolved, according to reports. It became much more difficult in 2019 when AtGames, a firm that specialises in miniature retro consoles and mobile devices, launched a Ms Pac-Man micro arcade cabinet, despite the fact that Bandai Namco said it hadn’t authorised such a release. Bandai Namco filed a lawsuit against AtGames, which one week later reached an agreement with GCC to obtain the Ms Pac-Man royalties interest that was supposedly owing to the company.
Since then, it appears that Bandai Namco has taken steps to guarantee that Ms Pac-Man does not appear in any of its games, in order to avoid further aggravating the royalties dispute. It is notable that Ms Pac-Man is not included in the upcoming Pac-Man Museum+, which will be released on May 27 and will comprise 14 Pac-Man games in one collection. Pac-Land will be included in the compilation, however, it is likely that Ms Pac-Man will be substituted by ‘Pac-Mom’ once again.