Pac-Man Pizza Parlor

Pac-Man Pizza Parlor is a PC game released in 2010 by Namco Networks. It is similar to Diner Dash and other such "food-serving" games. It has very few actual connections to Pac-Man other than by name, as Pac-Man himself serves as more of a sidekick and mascot to the actual protagonist of the game, a woman named Cathy who was put in charge of her father's pizza parlor after Blinky spooked him and caused him to fall on the floor.
==Story==
After Cathy's father is injured by Blinky, he loses his memory, forcing Cathy to manage the Pizza Cafe in his absence, but before she goes, her father tells her to put a coin in the old Pac-Man arcade machine in their house. When she does so, it summons forth the real Pac-Man as he appears in Pac 'n Roll along with a small fairy who help Cathy manage the restaurant. Cathy then remembers that it was Pac-Man who taught her father how to make great pizza when she was still a small child. She and Pac-Man are then able to get the restaurant in order and make plenty of pizzas, although they have to continuously avoid the antics of some mischievous ghosts. By the end of their first day though, Cathy finds out from a pair of loansharks that her father is in serious debt due to taking out a loan of $5,000 for a cabin boat, putting Cathy in quite the pickle, but they decide to give her time to pay off the debt after hearing that her father is in the hospital. 
After speaking with her father again in the hospital and trying to jog his memory, Cathy finds her father's recipe book for all sorts of foods and starts working alongside her father's friend Tom the honey farmer, helping her to expand the cafe's menu to include all sorts of dishes, from baked potatoes to sweet desserts. 
Once the Pizza Cafe becomes more successful, Cathy and Pac-Man go back to visit her father at the hospital and bring him his favorite smokepipe to see if it will jog his memory and ask him why he borrowed so much money for a cabin boat. Bob reveals to Cathy that the boat is actually the same boat that he and his late wife Nancy used to own and was a source of many happy memories, but was forced to sell the boat after she died in order to keep his business running, but he couldn't bare to part with it after so long and wanted to buy it back so he could keep the memory of his wife alive. Bob apologizes to Cathy for the trouble but Cathy and Pac-Man are moved to tears by Bob's emotional story about her mother and she gives him a kiss on the head, promising to come back and see him. Later in the rain, Cathy is crying and soaking in the rain, still in tears over the tale of her mother, but is suddenly shaken from her somber mood after bumping into her fiancee Brian who asks her if she's alright and happily gives her his umbrella before running off. Cathy is moved by Brian's kindness and walks happily away with Pac-Man with a smile and a blush on her face. 
The next day, Cathy finds the purse Brian gave her and starts wearing it to reminder her of him, but just then the loan sharks return demanding their money, and tell Cathy that her expensive purse should be worth some cash, at least enough to cover part of the debt, but Cathy refuses to sell. Just then, Brian arrives and overhears the loansharks and offers to pay the debt himself so they'll leave Cathy alone. A thankful Cathy then tells Brian that she'll pay him back, but he reminds her that there's no need since helping each other out will be the same when they're married. Later that day, Cathy dreams about her childhood with her mother and father and decides to visit Bob at the hospital with Pac. The doctor tells Cathy that Bob is on the road to recovery and doing much better but that he needs his rest. A delighted Cathy and Pac-Man go to find Brian and tell him the good news. 
After another successful business day, Cathy and Pac-Man go to see her father once more and bring him his most cherished memento, a locket given to him by her mother Nancy's containing her photo and a message reminding him that she will always love him. Bob then hugs Pac and Cathy and thanks them for all the help they've given him. The following day, Bob is finally released from the hospital and taken home by a delighted Pac, Cathy and Brian. Cathy then gives her father one more present, her mother's favorite mug that she had found which has the image of Pac-Man on it. Bob then asks Brian and Cathy to take him up the Closeness Hills cemetery to visit Nancy's grave and tell her about all the good things Cathy has done, leaving her favorite mug behind in her memory. A belated Bob then tells Cathy that both of them will start running the Pizza Cafe again tomorrow, delighting both Cathy and Pac as Brian (and even the loansharks who are hiding near by) watch on, happy for the family's happy ending. 
==Trivia==
*Upon its initial release, the game was reportedly exclusively sold on the official English Pac-Man website (pacman.com).https://web.archive.org/web/20100927025845/http://pacman.com/en/games/pc
*Pac-Man Pizza Parlor (alongside the Namco All-Stars version of Pac-Man) was present in Steam's API beginning in May of 2013; however, the game was removed in August of the same year. This indicates that Pac-Man Pizza Parlor was planned for a Steam release, but was either canceled or was only available for a very limited time.https://steamdb.info/app/47560/
*The game's concept seems to be in reference to the alleged "pizza" origin story for Pac-Man, which states that Pac-Man's inspiration came from Toru Iwatani seeing a pizza with one slice missing.
*Unusual for the series, the game seems to take place in a fictionalized version of the real world and Pac-Man is treated as more of a non-talking magical pet, and there are no other Pac-Worlders, instead the game's setting is completely inhabited by humans, ghosts, and a single unnamed fairy who players refer to as the Tutorial Fairy. 
*Despite that Pac-Man needed to be summoned from an arcade machine to enter the real world, the ghosts and Blinky were already shown haunting the world even before the arcade machine was reactivated.
== References ==
Category:Games
Category:Pac-Man Games
Category:PC Games