Jr. Pac-Man

Despite the massive success that Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man had enjoyed in the early Eighties, Super Pac-Man didn't generate as much profits as Bally Midway had hoped. Demand for all things Pac-Man was cooling down in both Japan and the U.S., but Midway was ready to give it one more try, with or without Namco's blessings.

GCC, the original designers of "Crazy Otto" (the add-on to Pac-Man that would later become Ms. Pac-Man), constructed this new version of Pac-Man, outdoing all of their previous efforts. Following with the family theme established by Ms. Pac-Man, and later Baby Pac-Man, they entitled this game Jr. Pac-Man, and gave the intermissions and the bonus prizes a slight teenager theme.

Jr. Pac-Man has a lot more work cut out for him than either of his parents. He must clear seven different mazes which are each twice as big as the mazes found in the earlier titles. To compensate for the expanded size of the mazes, GCC implemented a very smooth horizontal scrolling to the game. Additionally, Jr. Pac-Man had a cutely animated propeller beanie, there were no more escape tunnels, but most mazes featured two additional power pellets over the original four. Bonus prizes now moved around the maze, and had to be captured before they eventually collided with, and destroyed, one of the power pellets.

Marketing this sequel (along with the multiple-choice quiz game of Professor Pac-Man) without Namco's approval ultimately led to the termination of Namco's licensing agreement with Midway. And unlike Ms. Pac-Man, Namco has never recognized Jr. Pac-Man, as an official Pac-Man product. It was only ported to a handful of systems - including the Atari 2600, the Commodore 64, and the MS-DOS operating system. Many players of the 2600 version consider it the best official port of a Pac-Man game done by Atari, despite the fact that technical constraints lead to the mazes scroll vertically instead of horizontally.

Story
Like his father, no one really knows why Junior must eat all of the dots in these expanded mazes, but eat he must. However, the intermissions tell a compelling story of forbidden love between Jr. Pac-Man, and a young red ghost with a bow named "Yum-Yum". The arcade game equivalent of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Gameplay summary

 * The player must direct Jr. Pac-Man around each enormous maze with the joystick.
 * You must eat every regular pellet and power pellet in the current maze, to advance to the next.
 * You must avoid contact with the ghosts, while they are their normal color. If they catch you, Jr. Pac-Man will lose a life.
 * If you eat a power pellet, the ghosts will turn blue and you will have the chance to eat them for bonus points until they return to their normal color.
 * The mazes are larger than the size of the screen, and will scroll into view as you move through them.
 * A bonus item will appear over the ghost regenerator and travel towards a power pellet. Eat it before it touches the power pellet and destroys it.
 * When a bonus item passes over a regular pellet, it will grow in size and slow Jr. down when he eats it.