PrinceWatercress plays Ms. Pac Man (Atari 2600) - Part 1 of 5

She always was more than Pac-Man with a bow...

Next | End

It's Ms. Pac Man! Pac-Man now has a wife (I guess) thanks to the folks over at General Computer Corporation, who originally made this as a mod to the original Pac-Man game before creating a whole new game that was better than the original! While the Atari 2600 version improves on the original, this one does have a few drawbacks that leave a little to be desired. 

The joystick allows you to move Ms. Pac-Man, while the fire button does nothing. You have to eat all of the dots as well as the Power Pills, which weaken the ghosts and allow you to eat them as long as they are blue, to continue to the next screen. The more blue ghosts you eat in a row, the more points you'll get for each one, starting at 200 and doubling until you reach 1600. Beware: as you go through the game, the ghosts will be blue and edible for less and less time, and by the team you reach the green mazes, that amount of time will be an absolute pittance. At least the game controls much like the original, for better or worse.

You have four mazes: red, blue, white and green. You'll do each maze for two levels, then go on for the next one. Each color maze has a different layout, too, to keep you on your toes. Once you beat the second green maze, you'll alternate between the white and green mazes every other level, so consider the game "beaten" after you've gotten through at least seven mazes.

You also have seven fruits/foods: cherries, strawberries, oranges, pretzels, apples, pears and bananas. You'll see the fruits/foods in this order for the first seven mazes, and the further you go, the more the fruits/foods are worth. After the seventh maze, the fruit/food will be picked randomly every time. You'll get two opportunities per maze to eat the fruit/food for bonus points. The best part is, they aren't replaced by a vitamin this time around and they bounce around the maze here! You'll need the points off of these just like with the ghosts, as you can get an extra life at 10,000 points. Unfortunately, this is the only extra life you can get per play session, as opposed to getting one every time you clear a level. That makes getting though at least the first seven mazes a bit difficult when you're playing with all four ghosts in the maze.

The ghosts look a lot better here! Not only are they different colors, but they all act differently, too. The red ghost, which only shows up in the four ghosts variation of the game, is the most aggressive of the four and they can definitely chase after you when they see you. In later mazes, the red ghost will even be faster than you, and you'll need to eat a Power Pill to save yourself, as outrunning it may not be enough. Also, they leave through the top center of the ghost box in the center of the maze as opposed to the side, which was a huge mistake in the previous game.

Speaking of game variations: there are only four, and you can only switch between them with the game select switch on the console. All these variations do is change the amount of ghosts in the maze from one to four, with one to three bears being one to three bears and cherries being the full four ghost game. That's all you get. There's no speed variations for the ghosts or Ms. Pac-Man, and the game difficulty switches on the console do nothing, as opposed to cutting the amount of power pill time down by half in the original game. Atari put this game in an 8K cartridge as opposed to a 4K, and they skimped on game variations? Also, there's no two-player mode this time around, so if you want to play with a friend, you'll both have to share the joystick and play the same maze together.

Also, the original arcade game has intermissions every couple of mazes where you learn how Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man met and the adventures they had before the stork delivers a baby, setting the stage for Jr. Pac-Man. Thankfully, this didn't curb the amount of fun I had with this game. At least you can see the ghosts circle Ms. Pac-Man on a black screen before starting a new game.

All in all, this is a fine game. It may not have all the gameplay variations of the original game, it is still more or less an overall improvement on it, and is still worth checking out.