Jr. Pac-Man

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Jr. Pac-Man

Developer(s)	Bally Midway
Publisher(s)	Bally Midway
Release date(s)	1983
Genre(s)	Retro/Maze
Mode(s)	Up to 2 players, alternating turns
Platform(s)	Arcade
Input	4-way Joystick
Arcade cabinet	Upright
Arcade system(s)	Namco Pac-Man
Arcade CPU(s)	1x ZiLOG Z80 @ 3.072 MHz
Arcade sound system(s)	1x Namco WSG (3-channel mono) @ 3.072 MHz

Jr. Pac-Man is an arcade game released in 1983 by Bally Midway. It picks up where Pac-Man Plus left off. In addition to Baby Pac-Man, this game was created without the authorization of Namco, the original creators of Pac-Man. These games among others were what ultimately led to the termination of the licensing agreement between Namco and Midway.

1 Gameplay
- 1.1 Prizes
- 1.2 Intermissions
2 Trivia
3 Home versions
4 External links

[edit] Gameplay

The gameplay of Jr. Pac-Man is largely identical to that of its predecessors, with a few differences.

The maze is now three times the width of the display. The maze will scroll left and right as Jr. Pac-Man travels through it, and it is possible for ghosts to be off-screen sometimes.
There are now seven different mazes. They all now have six energizers (except for the last two, which only have energizers). There are no longer any tunnels at the edges of the maze.
Each bonus prize (known as fruit in Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, although none of the prizes in this game are fruit) appears from above the ghost box (even if off-screen), and as it roams the maze, it turns any dots it touches into larger dots worth 50 points that slow Jr. Pac-Man down as much when he eats an energizer. If the speed of Junior is twice as fast, then the large dots will not affect his speed. If a prize wanders for long enough without being eaten, it will kamikaze itself into an energizer, destroying itself and the energizer.

Clyde is replaced by yet another orange ghost named Tim

There are also a few cosmetic differences. The character controlled by the player is now Jr. Pac-Man, resembling a small Pac-Man with an eye and a propeller beanie. Clyde is replaced by yet another orange ghost named Tim. There are new sound effects including new music at game start; new sirens, new dot-eating, ghost-eating, and eye-returning sounds; and a new death sound. All game text is now in a lower-case anti-aliased font.

[edit] Prizes

The prizes are, in order of appearance:

Tricycle 100 points
Kite 200 points
Drum 500 points
Balloon 700 points
Train 1000 points
Cat 2000 points
Glass of beer 5000 points

[edit] Intermissions

There are three new intermissions:

"Jr. Meets Yum-Yum": Jr. sees Yum-Yum (the daughter of Blinky, having a bow on her head) and leaves his yard to play with her. Blinky approaches, and Ms. Pac-Man eats an energizer from her garden to rescue Jr.
"The Gift": Jr. brings a red balloon to Yum-Yum. They meet on a bridge, but Blinky watches from behind a bush.
"They Escape!": Blinky traps Jr. between himself and Yum-Yum. Ms. Pac-Man appears and Blinky leaves to chase her, while Jr. and Yum-Yum leave together in the other direction. Hearts appear around them.

This humorously incorporates the theme of forbidden love, and parodies the previous games' intermissions, since Jr. is sneaking away with a young, female ghost.

[edit] Trivia

A Jr. Pac-Man unit appears in the 1983 movie Joysticks.
Because the game was never purchased by Namco, the only sanctioned home version of the game was created in 1984 for the Atari 2600.

[edit] Home versions

Because of the video game crash of 1983, Jr. Pac-Man was not widely made available in home versions. An Atari 5200 version was complete except for the intermissions, but it was not released. The ROM image for this game has been made available online and can be played with an emulator.

A port of Jr. Pac-Man to the Atari 2600 was released in 1987 with a 1984 copyright date. This port featured mazes that scrolled vertically instead of horizontally, and only the music of the Intermissions played, but it was generally considered a rather well-done port.

A game called Pac-Jr. appeared in the Sega Genesis version of Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures in 1994 and requires three pieces of a game cartridge (or a hidden code) to play it. This game is completely different from Jr. Pac-Man as the levels layouts are totally different and it plays more like Ms. Pac-Man.