Jr. Pac-Man

Despite the massive success Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man had enjoyed in the early 80s, Super Pac-Man didn't generate as much profits as Bally Midway had hoped. Pac-mania was cooling down across the country, but Midway was ready to give it one more try, with or without Namco's blessings.

GCC, the original designers of the add-on to Pac-Man that would 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 titled 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 about the maze, and had to be caught before they collided with, and destroyed, one of the corner power-pellets.

Marketing this sequel without Namco's approval ultimately lead 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 ported to only a handful of systems, including the Atari 2600. Many players of this version consider it the best official port of a Pac-Man game done by Atari, despite the fact that the mazes scroll vertically instead of horizontally.

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  Title screen

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  Atari 2600 box art

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  C64 and IBM PC box art

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 ghost. The video game equivalent to Romeo and Juliet.

How to play

• Controls & Characters
• Maze Strategies
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