General Analysis III - adrixdx/ms-pacman GitHub Wiki

#Namco VS Midway Once Namco found out about the unauthorized Pac-Man sequels, Midway was forced to turn over the rights to all of them, including Ms. Pac-Man, and lost their licensed to the entire franchise. Due to the game's monumental popularity, Namco kept Ms. Pac-Man going, adding her to their official library of games and continue to release versions of the game today for both consoles and as video arcade cabinets.

#Versions

  • Apple II

Developed by Atarisoft in 1983. As you can see in the screenshot shown left, Sue is colored as green instead of orange.

  • Atari 2600

Developed by Atari in 1982. This conversion is considered a substantial improvement over the conversion of the original Pac-Man for the Atari 2600. Four mazes are included without intermissions, and Inky is colored as green instead of blue. The mazes are not exact copies of the arcade originals, but contain many of the key elements (number of tunnels, color, etc.) Regardless of which maze you are on, only two rounds need to be completed in order to move on to the next maze.

  • Atari 5200 and 400/800/XL/XE

Developed by Atari in 1983. Unlike the Pac-Man conversion for the A5200, Inky is colored correctly (blue instead of green); but the mazes are still stretched out to fill the television screen.

  • Atari 7800

Developed by General Computer Corporation (the designers of the original ROM hack of Pac-Man, "Crazy Otto") in 1984. Developed by Atari in 1990. The mazes are stretched out to fill the screen due to the small size of the ill-fated handheld unit.

  • Atari Lynx

The Lynx version also has some other features. For the extended mazes, there is a small turbo figure you can pick up (lightning symbol), under the ghost pen. This appears for a short period of time, and when you collect it, you speed up until you complete the maze or if you die on that maze you lose it. There is a new intermission 4, called 'The bus stop', where Ms. Pac-Man picks up the four ghosts, and drives off.

There are several new extended mazes that repeat in patterns, and eventually the ghosts stop blinking and you reach one final maze that continues forever, until you end your game.

  • Colecovision

Opcode Games, developer of new titles for the Colecovision system, has developed a homebrew cartridge that includes versions of the original Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, and Pac-Man Plus, with the aim of making them as faithful to the original arcade versions as they can possibly be. Despite limitation on the display resolution permitted by a television set, these conversions are considered to be quite accurate and well made.

  • Commodore 64

Developed by Atarisoft in 1984. Pinky is colored purple instead of pink. Later re-released by Thunder Mountain.

  • Commodore VIC-20

Developed by Atarisoft in 1984. Unlike Pac-Man for the VIC-20, the mazes are much more faithful to the arcade version, despite the low resolution.

  • Game Boy

Developed by Namco in 1993. You can choose between two views when you play, a full sized view that scrolls, and a half sized view that fits the whole screen. All of the ghosts are the same color, and therefore indistinguishable by sight alone.

  • Game Boy Color

Developed by Namco in 1999. This is a color-corrected version of the original Game Boy conversion. Other than the addition of color, the gameplay is identical to the regular Game Boy's. You have an option to see the full maze, or a scrolling version.

  • NES

Developed by Namco in 1993. This version's choices of colors for the mazes are not completely faithful to the arcade. As with the original Pac-Man NES conversion, the maze sizes are reduced to fit the screen, so there are less pellets to eat. There are many differences from the arcade version. The fruit counter continues to show bananas for the levels past 6, unlike the arcade which just stops. This is the hardest version of the game (even on arcade mode).

  • Xbox Live Arcade (Xbox 360)

  • iOS: iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch

  • Android