Pac-Man
2 recomps and 1 port
Pac-Man
mburkley/pacman-c
A hand-made C translation of the Pac-Man arcade ROM’s code: the original assembly is kept as comments and the part already translated is boxed off with //----. It aims at behavior identical to the original (patterns as in MAME) but with compiled C instead of emulated Z80, and keeps the original memory map. Video uses OpenGL with glut and sound uses PulseAudio; the keyboard is read directly from /dev/input. It needs the original ROMs for the code and the graphics, which are converted into header files with xxd. It builds on Debian and Ubuntu, and its list of known bugs is still long (fruit, cutscenes, sprites in demo mode). Its last activity was in May 2025.
You needYour own Pac-Man ROMs (program and graphics), converted to header files with xxd. Linux (tested on Debian and Ubuntu) with the glut and pulse-simple libraries, and your user in the input group.
Pac-Man
mariqtereza-del/PacArcadeComp
A native Windows player for the 1980 arcade game, with a modern front end. It carries a software copy of the arcade board (memory map and video and sound chips) and the game rewritten as native C++ that reproduces the original program; from your own pacman.zip it only reads the data tables (maze, text, levels, graphics, and sound). It contains no Z80 processor: according to its author, every frame, with its exact timing, was checked identical to the real program on a Z80 across millions of frames (the Z80 core is kept only in the tests), with the same ghosts, speeds, and bugs, including level 256. It adds menus, save states and rewind, gamepads, screen effects, and the arcade’s DIP settings. The repository includes code generated from the game’s program: src/game/attract_prog.h is the instruction list of the attract-mode routines as C++ data, taken from a disassembled listing that isn’t published (only its blocks and labels are kept), with no ROM bytes. Version 2.1.0, from October 28, is the latest and is Windows-only. It states it was made with the help of Claude.
You needYour own copy of the Midway Pac-Man ROM set, pacman.zip (the same 10 files MAME uses), next to the executable; the program checks it is the right one. 64-bit Windows 10 or 11 (the source also builds and is tested on Linux, but the published release is Windows-only).
Pac-Man (NES)
Mr-Shizzy/PacManRecomp
A native Windows version of Pac-Man for the NES (Namco’s 1993 release), made by static recompilation with NESRecomp: the original 6502 code is translated into C and compiled into a Windows program. The launcher doesn’t ship the translated game: on first run, a recompiler and TinyCC translate and compile your ROM into a game.dll on your PC and then delete those tools, so the game’s code is only ever generated on your machine. On top of the untouched game it adds a launcher with video, audio, controls, and game option settings, cheats, a documented mod system, one- and two-player games, controller rumble, high scores, and an optional update check that is off by default. The README only lists Windows 10 and 11; there is no Mac or Linux version. Version 1.1.1 (October 6) is the latest of six releases published between October 4 and October 6, about 5 MB.
You needYour own copy of Pac-Man (USA) (Namco) for the NES, as a .nes file with any name, placed next to the executable; the Tengen version is a different program and doesn’t work. Plus 64-bit Windows 10 or 11.
Questions
Can you play Pac-Man natively on PC?
Yes. The catalog has 2 recomps and 1 port, and one of them is fully playable.
What do I need to play it?
Your own copy of Pac-Man (Arcade). Recompendium only links projects that don’t distribute the game, and each entry says which version or region you need.