Ms. Pac-Man

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Ms. Pac-Man
Developer(s)	Midway
Publisher(s)	Midway
Release date(s)	1982
Genre(s)	Maze
Mode(s)	Up to 2 players, alternating turns
Platform(s)	Arcade, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, Atari 8-bit family, Atari Lynx, Commodore 64, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Gear, iPod, Mobile Phone, NES, Sega Mega Drive, Super NES, ZX Spectrum
Input	4-way Joystick
Arcade cabinet	Upright, cabaret and cocktail
Arcade system(s)	Namco Pac-Man
Arcade display	19 inch Raster, Vertical orientation, 224 × 288

Ms. Pac-Man is a popular arcade game released by Midway in 1982. This sequel to Pac-Man differs from its predecessor on the fact that it has different screens and a female character. It was also one of the more successful of early arcade games as its sales record is still unmatched.^{[citation needed]}.

Contents 1 Gameplay 2 History 3 Home versions 4 Mobile games 5 Other versions and bugs 6 Record Ms. Pac-Man scores 7 In popular culture 8 External links

[edit] Gameplay

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

• Ms. Pac-Man moves about the maze significantly faster than the original Pac-Man.
• There are now four different mazes, with different 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 which only has one set of tunnels). The maze is changed after each of the first three intermissions.
• The ghosts have pseudo-random movement, which precludes the use of patterns to beat each board.
• The two "fruits" on each level now enter through one of the warp tunnels, wander around the maze for a while making a "thump-thump" noise, then (if not eaten) eventually leave through a warp tunnel.
• Clyde is replaced by another orange ghost named Sue, who was later turned purple in Pac-Land to differentiate her from Clyde.

There are new intermissions between the maze changes:

1. "Act 1 - They Meet": Pac-Man is chased by Inky, Ms. Pac-Man is chased by Pinky; the ghosts bang heads, the Pac-Men escape, and a heart appears between them.
2. "Act 2 - The Chase": Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man chase each other quickly across the screen five times, with more speed each time.
3. "Act 3 - Junior": A stork drops off a bundle containing a tiny Pac-Man (later reused in the attract mode for Jr. Pac-Man).
4. "Act 4 - The End": (Sega Megadrive II Version) Played after all levels have been completed, Ms. Pac-Man and Pac-Man come from both ends of the screen and meet in the middle, they then turn to the front (as if looking at the player) and both wave goodbye. The end shot is a picture of Ms. Pac-Man and Pac-Man sitting on a beach with arms around each other, the Jr. Pac-Men are seen in the background.

Like Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man suffers from a bug in the fruit-drawing routine, which 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, the data tables used to determine the maze and ghost behavior for a particular level are exhausted and invalid data is loaded. A corrupt value loaded into the pointer to the maze data causes the screen to turn black. Though the ghosts and Ms. Pac-Man are still visible, the game becomes unplayable. In essence, once you have completed the 133rd stage, you have beaten the game.

At level 16, the first "ghost shudder" occurs, when the Power Pellets are so ineffective, it merely causes them to change direction, without turning blue at all. It becomes permanent at level 21.

[edit] History

Ms. Pac-Man was originally conceived as a bootlegged hack of Pac-Man called Crazy Otto[1], created by programmers employed at the General Computer Corporation (GCC).

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^{[citation needed]}.

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 extra bonus game.

[edit] Home versions

Like many other games of its era, Ms. Pac-Man was ported to many home computer and gaming systems. It has also been included in Namco's, Microsoft's and Atari's late 1990s series of classic game anthologies.

The Mega Drive/Genesis and NES versions, by Tengen, and the Super NES version, by Williams Electronics, took a few liberties. They featured 4 different maze-sets: the original arcade mazes, bigger mazes, smaller mazes, and "strange" mazes. There was also a "Pac-Booster" option which lets players make Ms. Pac-Man go much faster, making the game much easier and more entertaining. All of these versions also allow two people to play simultaneously, with player 2 as Pac-Man, either cooperatively or competitively.

There is also a standalone, battery-powered version of the game that can be plugged directly into a television. Ms. Pac-Man and four other games (Galaga, Mappy, Xevious and Pole Position) are included in a self-contained joystick hand controller.[2] Ms. Pac Man was also a free game bundled with every Xbox Live Arcade disc for the original Xbox. The Xbox 360 XBLA version was released on January 9, 2007.

Atari 2600 (1982)	Apple II (1983)	Commodore 64 (1984)	ZX Spectrum (1984)
Atari 7800 (1987)	Atari Lynx (1990)	Sega Master System (1991)

[edit] Mobile games

InfoSpace Games and Namco joined to create Ms. Pac-Man For Prizes, the mobile version of the classic Ms.Pac-Man where players across the U.S. can compete against others in daily and weekly tournaments to win prizes.

• IGN Wireless review of Ms. Pac-Man for Prizes
• Official site with listing of phones the Ms. PAC-MAN for prizes game is available on

Namco also released a version of Ms. PAC-MAN (without the tournament) for play on Palm and Pocket PC devices.

• Namco Ms. PAC-MAN Palm page
• Namco Ms. PAC-MAN Windows Mobile page

In February of 2007, Namco in conjunction with Apple released a version of Ms. PAC-MAN for the iPod (fifth generation). This version is a commemorative addition for the 25th anniversary of the release of the original arcade version of Ms. PAC-MAN.

[edit] Other versions and bugs

• Some versions of the game had an "expert" level, where if you hold the joystick up while pressing the start button, the whole game speed doubled (including music and sound effects). Others have Ms. Pac-Man going twice her speed while the rest of the game went normal speed. The latter allowed for people to obtain much higher scores.

• There is an obscure glitch in the original arcade game. If the player inserts a coin at the title screen, before Blinky appears, and begins, the walls of the first maze will be blue instead of pink.

• At least one version of the game (found in a diner near the Kansas-Nebraska border) has the monsters turn into blue mice when Ms. Pac-Man eats the energizers. This version may have a bootleg game PCB, instead of the original.^{[citation needed]}

• Some times you can run straight through the ghost if you're going at a good speed and make lots of turns

[edit] Record Ms. Pac-Man scores

According to the Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard, the high-score on Ms. Pac-Man was the most revered accomplishment in video game playing during the early 1980s. Because of the game's prestige, ABC-TV's "That's Incredible" aired, on October 11, 1982, a Ms. Pac-Man World Championship that was won by Tim Collum, of Boyd, TX.

Twin Galaxies reports that during the 1980s more fraudulent scores were submitted on Ms. Pac-Man than on any other arcade title. This was due to the level of fame accorded to the Ms. Pac-Man champion, which was far greater than for any other game of that era.

Official Succession of Verified Ms. Pac-Man World Champions:

1. 933,580 Abdner Ashman, Apollo Amusements, Pompano Beach, FL, April 6, 2006 Photo:www.apoloamusments.com
2. 920,310 Chris Ayra, Miami, FL, September 16, 1998
3. 910,350 Rick Fothergill, Stoney Creek, ON, Canada, September 8, 1998
4. 874,530 Chris Ayra, Victoria, BC, Canada, June 30, 1985
5. 820,150 Chris Ayra, Miami, FL April 17, 1984
6. 703,560 Billy Mitchell, Hollywood, FL, January 27, 1984
7. 681,130 Tom Asaki, Twin Galaxies, Ottumwa, IA, October 2, 1983
8. 557,120 Billy Mitchell, World Class Amusements, Wilmington, NC, September 20, 1983
9. 436,500 Billy Mitchell, 7-11, Hollywood, FL, July 1, 1983
10. 419,950 Tom Asaki, Twin Galaxies, Ottumwa, IA, June 6, 1983
11. 411,050 Spencer Oueren, Twin Galaxies, Ottumwa, IA, June 5, 1983
12. 393,000 Tom Asaki, Bozeman, MT, May 5, 1983
13. 257,100 Darren Olsen, Twin Galaxies, Ottumwa, IA, March 20, 1983
14. 201,000 Joe Wingard, Whitefish, MT, June 1, 1982
15. 130,300 Rick Greenwasser, Kirksville, MO May 20,1982

[edit] In popular culture

• A Ms. Pac-Man machine is the basis of a storyline in the Friends episode The One Where Joey Dates Rachel. The plotline revolves around Chandler entering rude words onto the game's high-score screen and then attempting to beat his scores (thus removing them) before Ross's seven year old son arrives. In reality, Ms. Pac-Man does not have a high-score screen, displaying only the single best score, and the game does not allow players to enter their initials.

• In one series of strips in Bill Amend's popular newspaper comic strip FoxTrot, Jason Fox, who is in fifth grade and still detests girls, has a nightmare in which he is romanced by Tomb Raider heroine Lara Croft. In one of these strips, Lara keeps trying to persuade Jason to play her game, and Jason declares that he will never play a video game starring a girl. At this point, Lara says, "Permit me to reintroduce you to someone," and Ms. Pac-Man appears: "Hi, Jason. Remember me?"

• A Ms. Pac-Man unit appears in the 1983 movie WarGames, in the 1983 movie Joysticks, in the 1984 movie Tightrope (the cabinet appears in the background of the bar scene), in the 1990 movie The Grifters, in the 1999 movie Man On The Moon and in the 2002 movie Van Wilder.

• A Ms. Pac-Man machine is seen in Scrubs in the episode "My Own Private Practice Guy". 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 of the game.

• 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".

• In the 1980's cartoon version of Pac-Man, she was named Pepper.

• In 1982, R. Cade and the Video Victims recorded a song titled "Ms. Pac-Man", using sound effects from the game, and released it on the album "Get Victimized", a lesser-known video game song album.

• While not inspired by the game, the song Game Over by rapper Lil Flip samples heavily from it.

• In the movie Are We There Yet?, Lindsay tells Nick that Kevin had a bad dream playing Ms. Pac-Man at the mall but refers to her as Lady Pac-Man.

• In The Go! Team's music video Junior Kickstart, Ms. Pac-Man is depicted running around New York City while being chased by Blinky, Inky and Pinky.

[edit] External links

• Ms. Pac-Man entry at StrategyWiki
• Ms. Pac-Man (360) Reviews at Metacritic
• Ms. Pac-Man for Prizes - mobile game
• ClassicGaming.com entry on Ms. Pac-Man
• Ms. Pac-Man at the Killer List of Videogames
• Ms. Pac-Man at MobyGames
• Ms. Pac-Man at the Internet Movie Database
• Twin Galaxies Scoreboard for Ms. Pac-Man
• Pactionary -- list of terms and current games

v • d • e Pac-Man video games

Pac-Man • Ms. Pac-Man • Super Pac-Man • Pac-Man Plus • Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man • Baby Pac-Man • Pac & Pal • Jr. Pac-Man • Professor Pac-Man • Pac-Land • Pac-Mania • Pac-Attack • Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures • Pac-Jr. • Pac-In-Time • Pac-Man Arrangement • Pac-Man Collection • Pac-Man Vs. • Pac-Pix • Pac-Man World • Pac-Man World 2 • Pac-Man World 3 • Pac-Man: Adventures in Time • Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness • Pac-Man Fever • Pac 'n Roll • Pac-Man World Rally