Shit (MSX)

Shit
Title screen.
Publisher	Aackosoft, Eurosoft
Developer	Aackosoft
Console	MSX
Date	1987
Alternate names/hacks	Oh Shit! Oh No!

Shit, also known as Oh Shit!, is an MSX game developed and published by Aackosoft in 1985. The game is a clone of Pac-Man, even using graphics directly taken from Namco's MSX port of the game, and features digitized voices and other minimal tweaks from the original. It has since gained infamy for its use of profanity in both the digitized speech and the title itself.

Overview

There are very few differences in Shit compared to the original Pac-Man. The title screen is set up similarly to Pac-Man's but features digitized speech introducing the four (renamed) ghosts: "THIS IS JOEY, PAUL, WILLY AND FRANKIE"; the ghosts proceed to spin after this is stated. The game itself features near-perfect recreations of the classic maze, but the positioning of certain parts appears to be off. Every time Pac-Man gets hit, he yells a long "OH SHIT!" before losing a life, and "GAME OVER" after all lives have been lost. Only the first two cutscenes are left intact but lack music for unknown reasons. The Galaxian flagship also appears to be absent in the game.

The game also has two exclusive features that cannot be found in the original Pac-Man: the ghosts can change into rainbow colors after Pac-Man eats a power pellet (starting in Level 10 and onward), and the player can enter their initials after all lives have been lost.

Written by Steve Course, this game has been released in Japan, the Netherlands under the name Oh Shit!, and Europe, titled Oh No!. In Oh No!, Pac-Man has no death scream; apart from this, there are no other in-game differences from the original. Covers for the game are very strange and have no resemblance to the game at all, other than the word "Classics" (implying it was a "classic" arcade game). There is, however, a character on the front of the international versions that resembles both Pac-Man and some sort of bear-like animal. The character has small ears and fangs - features which Pac-Man lacks (Pac-Man has a nose in his original artwork, but it is very different from the animalistic one featured on this character). The Japanese box art stole its artwork from a 1985 horror novel by Gary Brander, The Howling III: Echoes, a novel from The Howling Series.

Trivia

• There is a bug in the game in which the ghosts can still kill Pac-Man while heading back to the Ghost Pen to regenerate once the Power Pellet effect has worn off at the same time.

Gallery

The Japanese release's box.

The novel the Japanese version takes its cover art from.

Alternative box art, possibly from Europe.

Cover variant from a cassette release.

Possible early cassette with hand-drawn writing.

Possible later printed label.