Mappy

Mappy Arcade Game

Mappy was created by Namco in 1983 and distributed in the USA by Midway.  The name of the game is a derivative of Japanese slang for a police officer, similar to the term “pig” used in the USA.  In this game, the player controls Mappy, a police mouse, through a mansion of cats and stolen goods.  The cats, called Mewkies, had stolen a number of items, such as radios, televisions, computers, safes, and paintings.  Traversing a series of hallways and using bounce pads to move from level to level in the mansion, Mappy had to collect the stolen items while avoiding the cats (including the boss cat, named Namco).  The bounce pads have a limited use (up to four bounces) before they disappear.  Once all items were recovered, the player would advance to the next level.  At a certain point, a bonus round is played whereby Mappy had to collect as many balloons as possible, in a given time frame, using the bounce pads.  As the levels advanced, new features became available and things would get increasingly more difficult.

Mappy Arcade Game Cabinet

In 1986, a sequel of the game was released in the USA called Mappy-Land.  This game featured the same characters, but instead of collecting stolen goods from the cats, Mappy must collect things from the cats for his family members, such as baseball cards for his son, Christmas trees for a party, wedding rings for his fiancé, etc.  There were additional sequels of the game released only in Japan, and in later years, the game was featured on the Jakks Pacific handheld TV Games unit as well as in the Namco Museum compilations for PlayStation, GameCube, and Xbox.