Mini Munchman is a maze-chase game that slips into a shirt pocket: steer your hungry hero round a tiny LCD maze, eat every piece of fruit and keep clear of the two ghosts on your tail.
Grandstand sold it in Britain in 1981, but the game inside is Epoch’s Pak Pak Man from Japan, known in America as Epoch-Man. The box calls it an “LCD Pocket Arcade Game” and lists six functions: game, watch, stop-watch, lap-timer, day/date and alarm.
Interesting facts
Munchman in name only. The big tabletop Munchman was a Tomy game; its pocket-sized namesake came from a rival Japanese maker, Epoch. Grandstand tied the two together with a name and a yellow case, whereas Epoch’s own version was white. A larger Pocket Pac-Man followed in 1983.
Three million munchers. According to its designer, Masayuki Horie, Pak Pak Man sold about three million units, which would make it one of the best-selling pocket maze games of its day. Grandstand also sold it in Australia and New Zealand, where it was simply called Mini-Arcade.
Off the scale. Every fruit and ghost is a fixed shape in the LCD that can only blink on or off, and the two bridges are simply printed in red on top. The scoreboard is no roomier: it stops at 1,999, and beat that and it gives up and shows HHH.