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Ms. Pac-Man

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Ms. Pac-Man
The first level of Ms. Pac-Man.
Developer(s)Midway / General Computer Corporation
Publisher(s)Midway / Namco
Platform(s)Arcade
Release1981
Genre(s)Maze
Mode(s)Up to 2 players, alternating turns
Arcade systemNamco Pac-Man

Ms. Pac-Man is an arcade video game produced by Midway as an unauthorized sequel to Pac-Man. It was released in North America in 1981 and became one of the most popular video games of all time, leading to its adoption by Pac-Man licenser Namco as an official title. This game introduces a female protagonist, new maze designs and several minor gameplay changes over the original game.

Gameplay

The gameplay of Ms. Pac-Man is largely identical to that of the original Pac-Man. The player gathers points by eating dots and avoiding ghosts (contact with one loses a life). Power-pellets or energizers change the ghosts, which reverse their course and can be eaten for bonus points (200, 400, 800 and 1600 points if all 4 are eaten before they change back to their normal colors). Fruit bonuses can be consumed for increasing point values, twice per level. As the levels increase, the speed and difficulty increase as well.

There are, however, some notable differences:

  • There are now six different mazes (four styles, with five colors) and filled-in walls (compared with the original Pac-Man's hollow walls). Each maze has two pairs of warp tunnels connecting the right and left sides of the maze (except for the third maze design, which only has one set of tunnels). The maze is changed after each intermission.
  • The ghosts have semi-random movement, which precludes the use of pre-set movements (patterns) to beat each board.
  • Instead of appearing in the center of the maze, fruits enter the maze through one of the warp tunnels and bounce around the ghost pen. They eventually leave through another tunnel if not eaten. The point values increase through the banana (5,000 pts), after which fruit appears in a somewhat random pattern.
  • The orange ghost's name changed from Clyde to Sue. (Sue would later become a purple female ghost in Pac-Land, appearing alongside Clyde.)
  • The three intermissions have changed to follow the developing relationship between Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man (from when they first meet to having a stork drop off their baby).

Like Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man has a bug in the fruit-drawing routine that renders the 256th board unplayable. While it may be possible to reach the 256th board using the rack-test cheat available as a DIP switch (usable through MAME or other arcade emulator), the actual arcade hardware will crash at or around the 134th board. At this point in the game, a bug in the code causes invalid data tables to be used for a subroutine, which is supposed to draw invisible characters that slow down the ghosts in the tunnels.[1] On level 142, a similar bug causes a corrupt value to be loaded into the pointer to the maze data, causing the screen to turn black. Although the ghosts and Ms. Pac-Man are still visible, the game becomes unplayable.

History

Ms. Pac-Man was originally conceived as a bootlegged hack of Pac-Man called Crazy Otto,[2] created by programmers employed at the General Computer Corporation (GCC).

The programmers, surprised at the quality of the game they had created, showed it to Midway, Namco's American distributor of the original game. Midway had become impatient in waiting for Namco to release its next Pac-Man game (which would be Super Pac-Man), and were enthusiastic that such a game had come to their attention. They bought the rights to Crazy Otto, changed the sprites to fit the Pac-Man universe, renamed the game Ms. Pac-Man, and released it into arcades.[citation needed]

After the game became wildly popular, Midway and GCC undertook a brief legal battle concerning royalties, but because the game was accomplished without Namco's consent, both companies eventually turned over the rights of Ms. Pac-Man to the parent company, fearing a lawsuit. Nonetheless, Ms. Pac-Man was the first of a series of unauthorized sequels that eventually led to the termination of the licensing agreement between Namco and Midway.[3]

Ms. Pac-Man was later released on the third Namco Museum game, however there is no mention of it in Namco's official archives (including the archives on all of the Namco Museum releases).

In 2001, Namco released an arcade board featuring both Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga in honor of the 20th anniversary of both games. It also features Pac-Man as a hidden bonus game. The later 25th Anniversary Edition allows all three games to be selected at the main menu.

Ports

Like many other games of its era, Ms. Pac-Man has been ported to many platforms.

  • A tabletop version of Ms. Pac-Man was released in 1981 by Coleco. The unit was shaped like a miniature arcade cabinet, was controlled with a built-in joystick, and used a multicolor vacuum fluorescent display. [4]
  • The Mega Drive/Genesis and NES versions, by Tengen, and the Super NES version, by Williams Electronics, took a few liberties. They featured four different sets of mazes: the original arcade mazes, bigger mazes, smaller mazes, and "strange" mazes. There was also a Pac-Booster option that let players make Ms. Pac-Man go much faster. All of these versions also allowed two people to play simultaneously, with player 2 as Pac-Man, either cooperatively or competitively. The game also ended at level 32, at which point an intermission that did not occur in the original game took place, where Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man say good bye.

In film and television

  • Ms. Pac-Man is a central character in the Pac-Man animated TV series, where she is named Pepper and is Pac-Man's wife.[8]
  • A Ms. Pac-Man machine is the basis of a storyline in the Friends episode The One Where Joey Dates Rachel. The plot line revolves around Chandler entering crude words onto the game's high-score screen and then have Phoebe attempt to beat his scores (thus removing them) before Ross's seven year old son arrives.[9]
  • A Ms. Pac-Man machine is the focus of several scenes in episode "My Own Private Practice Guy" of the TV show Scrubs. The Todd comments "Oh Ms. Pac-man I would sex that bow right off your head. Eat those dots you naughty, naughty girl." Dr. Kelso is also an expert at the game, with an impossibly high score of 40,000,000.[10]
  • In an episode of the animated series Futurama, "Anthology of Interest II", in Fry's video game inspired segment Ms. Pac-Man appears after her husband, General Colin Pac-Man, is killed by a laser bolt from a Space Invader. Fry then asks Amy to tend to "the Widow Pac-Man".[11]
  • In the movie Wayne's World, Wayne asks the owner of 'Noah's Arcade' "I've always wanted to know what is the difference between Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, really?", to which he replies "Well, she has a bow on her head". Wayne responds with: "That's it? Get right out of town!".[citation needed]
  • In an episode of Family Guy, "Meet The Quagmires", Peter is seen playing Menstrual Ms. Pac-Man. She is depicted with PMS and manages to deter the ghosts with a vocal outburst.

References

  1. ^ Donhodges.Com—Ms. Pac-Man's Kill Screens Analyzed And Fixed
  2. ^ Crazy Otto
  3. ^ Ms. Pac-Man Videogame by Midway (1981) - The International Arcade Museum and the KLOV
  4. ^ Coleco Ms Pac Man
  5. ^ Reichert, Matt, 5200 Rumor Mill: Puffer Ms. Pac-Man, retrieved 2007-10-24
  6. ^ Welcome to JAKKS TV Games >> Ms. Pac-Man
  7. ^ Ms. PAC-MAN now available for your iPod
  8. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083461/
  9. ^ "The one where Joey dates Rachel", Season 8, Episode 12, first aired 10 January 2002
  10. ^ "My own private practice guy", Season 2, Episode 41
  11. ^ "Anthology of interest II", Episode 50, Production code 3ACV18
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