Ms. Pac-Man

When Pac-Man was still hot in the arcades, a small company known as GCC, or General Computing Corp., was in the business of making arcade "enhancements" which were essentially small hacks designed to make certain games more appealing. GCC was known for an add on that they sold for Atari's Missile Command when they sat down to design a hack for Pac-Man. They surprised themselves with the quality of the hack, which they had entitled "Crazy Otto" and pitched the idea to Midway Games.

Midway was hungry to cash in on the Pac-Man phenomenon that was occuring at the time, and Namco's own sequel to Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man, was still a few months out of development, so they bought the rights to "Crazy Otto" and renamed it Ms. Pac-Man in an effort to entice more females to play arcade games. Namco was not pleased with Midway's alteration of Pac-Man in to a new game. As a result, a deal was struck between the two companies that would hand the rights of Ms. Pac-Man back over to Namco after a number of years. Ms. Pac-Man was not quite as acknowledged by Namco in Japan until very recently when it seems, in perhaps a nod to the newer game's popularity and quality, it began appearing in select compilations.

Ms. Pac-Man expands on Pac-Man in the following ways. Instead of one static blue-on-black maze, there are now four multi-colored mazes to complete. Instead of the fruit appearing stationary below the ghost pen, it now bounces in through a tunnel, takes a few laps around the pen, and bounces back out if not eaten. Instead of just one escape tunnel, there are (in all but one of the mazes) two sets of tunnels. And lastly, Ms. Pac-Man introduces an element of randomness to the ghosts' behavior which eliminated the effectiveness of patterns that crippled the earning power of Pac-Man, and makes Ms. Pac-Man much more of a game of skill then memorization.

Ms. Pac-Man was considerably faster than Pac-Man as well, but some players felt that it wasn't fast enough. Hackers began to offer unofficial EPROM upgrades that sped the game up. Most of these mods sped up the player, but not the ghosts, making the game easier and more attractive to novice players.

• File:MPM Title.gif

  Title screen

Story

Like Pac-Man, there really is no story element per se, but the intermissions that you are treated to tell the story of how Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man meet, fall in love, and have a child together (dropped off by a passing stork.)

How to play

At a glance

• You control Ms. Pac-Man through each maze with the joystick.
• You must eat every dot and energizer to advance to the next stage.
• You must avoid contact with the ghosts while they are their normal color.
• If you eat an energizer, the ghosts will turn blue, and you may eat them for bonus points until they turn back to their normal color.
• Ghosts travel at half speed through the side escape tunnels. Use them to get away.
• A fruit or pretzel will appear from one of the escape tunnels twice per stage and bounce around the ghost pen.
• Eat the fruit or pretzel for bonus points. They will leave the maze if uneaten.

In depth

• Controls & Characters
• Maze Variations
• Home Version Comparisons

Box artwork

Ms. Pac-Man has been released on many different systems, and has accumulated a wide range of box artwork, some of which is displayed below.

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  Atari 2600

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  Atari 5200

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  Atari 7800

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  Atari 800

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  Apple II

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  Commodore 64

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  TI-99/4a

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  Atari Lynx

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  NES (Namco)

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  Game Boy

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  Game Boy Color

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  Sega Game Gear

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  NES (Tengen)

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  SNES

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  Sega Master System (Europe)

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  Genesis