Mappy

Mappy
Mappy
	North American arcade flyer
Developer(s)	Namco
Publisher(s)	JP: Namco; NA: Bally Midway; EU: Orion;
Artist(s)	Hiroshi Ono
Composer(s)	Nobuyuki Ohnogi
Series	Mappy
Platform(s)	Arcade, MSX, Famicom, Super Cassette Vision, Sharp X1, Game Gear, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, FM-7, MZ-700/MZ-1500, PC-88, X68000, Mobile phone, iOS, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch
Release	JP: March 1983; NA: April 1983; EU: 1983;
Genre(s)	Platform
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

Mappy^[a] is an arcade game by Namco, originally released in 1983 and distributed in the United States by Bally Midway. Running on the Namco's Super Pac-Man hardware modified to support horizontal scrolling, the game features a mouse protagonist and cat antagonists, similar to Hanna-Barbera's Tom and Jerry cartoon series. The name "Mappy" is likely derived from mappo (マッポ), a slightly pejorative Japanese slang term for policeman. The game has been re-released in several Namco arcade compilations. It spawned a handful of sequels and a 2013 animated web series developed by cartoonists Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub.

Gameplay

The player guides Mappy the police mouse through the mansion of the cats called Meowkies (Mewkies in Japan) to retrieve stolen goods, such as the Mona Lisa or a TV. The player uses a left-right joystick to move Mappy and a single button to operate doors. The mansion has six floors of hallways (four or five in some other versions) in which the stolen items are stashed. Mappy and the cats move between floors by bouncing on trampolines at various places in the house. Both Mappy and the cats can land on a floor on the way up, but not on the way down. When Mappy passes cats in the air, he is unharmed, but if he touches a cat he will lose a life. The trampolines break when Mappy bounces on them four times in a row, and the trampolines change color depending on how many times Mappy has used them without a rest. In addition to the Meowkies, the boss cat Goro (Nyamco in Japanese) also roams around. He is faster but less aggressive than the Meowkies. Throughout the levels, Goro hides behind the different recoverable items. If Mappy recovers an item which Goro is hiding behind, the player receives 1000 points in addition to the score for the item. Items come in pairs; retrieving the second item in a pair immediately after the first multiplies the point value of the second item (x2, up to x6).

Doors only open towards their doorknobs. Hitting a cat with a door scores 50 points and stuns the cat. Meowkies and Goro can open doors but will get stunned unless the door opens away from them (doorknobs away), and they can walk through opened doors. They cannot open blue doors. Blue doors, when opened, blast a slow moving microwave in the direction of the doorknob that will trap any cats it touches and remove them from the board when the wave reaches the edge of the screen. The more cats caught, the more points gained. If Goro is trapped by a wave, the score is doubled. Cats removed in this way return shortly from above.

A round is completed when all the loot is retrieved. If the player takes longer than usual to clear a round, a "Hurry" message appears after which the music speeds up and the cats move quickly and aggressively, and more Meowkies are added (two will appear ready to drop as the Meowkies normally do immediately following the "Hurry" message, and more Meowkies can arrive later on). If the player takes much longer after this, a green disc with Goro's face on it named the "Gosenzo Coin" will drop onto the top-middle platform and chase Mappy more effectively than the Meowkies as it can kill him while jumping. The Gosenzo can open doors and cannot be stopped by microwave doors or any objects.

The third round and every fourth round after is a bonus round. Mappy, unbothered by the cats, must bounce across a series of trampolines, popping fifteen different suspended red balloons (200 pts), with a "Goro" (2000 points) along the way. A bonus (5000 pts) is awarded if all the balloons are popped before the music ends. After every bonus round, a new feature is added to the gameplay, such as bells that freeze cats. The "Hurry" message will also appear sooner.

Ports and sequels

Hopping Mappy is a direct sequel, released to arcades in 1986.
Mappy-Land is a console-only sequel.
Mappy was featured as one of the games in Namco Gallery Vol. 1, which was a collection of classic Namco arcade games released for the Game Boy.
In 2003, two mobile games were released in Japan with the titles Teku-Teku Mappy (テクテクマッピー) and Mappy De Puzzle (マッピーDEパズル).^[5]
Mappy is a playable character in the PSP racing game Pac-Man World Rally (2007).^[6]
In September 2011, the mobile game Mappy World (マッピーワールド) was released.^[7]
In 2021, Mappy was released online by Hamster Corporation under the Arcade Archives brand for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4.^[8]
In 2022, Hopping Mappy was released for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 as part of the Arcade Archives series.^[9]

Reception

In Japan, Game Machine listed Mappy in its June 1, 1983 issue as the third most-successful table arcade unit of the month.^[14] It also topped the Game Machine chart for new table arcade cabinets in June 1983.^[15] In 2015, Hardcore Gamer included Mappy on its 200 Best Video Games of All Time.^[16]

Legacy

As part of Bandai Namco's ShiftyLook initiative, an animated Mappy web series, titled Mappy: The Beat was made.^[17] The series was written and directed by Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub, who also performed all of the character voices, and was designed with limited animation in the style of Kurtz and Straub's Blamimations series. The story follows Mappy, now working a thankless job as a security guard for his former foe Goro's company Nyamco. He is accompanied by his friends and fellow Nyamco employees, the laid-back digging-obsessed Dig Dug and the dim but good-natured Sky Kid, along with other Bandai Namco characters working at the office.^[18] Mappy: The Beat premiered on ShiftyLook's YouTube channel on July 22, 2013, and ran for 13 episodes, each roughly eight minutes in length, with the final episode released on January 20, 2014. Kurtz also made a guest appearance as Mappy on the concurrent Bravoman animated series, with Bravoman in turn appearing in the final story arc of Mappy, portrayed by guest voice Dax Gordine. Following the closure of ShiftyLook, their channel was removed from YouTube, making the episodes no longer officially available.