Pac-Man Plus

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Pac-Man Plus

Developer(s)	Bally Midway
Publisher(s)	Bally Midway
Release date(s)	1982
Genre(s)	Retro/Maze
Mode(s)	Up to 2 players, alternating turns
Platform(s)	Arcade
Input	4-way Joystick
Arcade cabinet	Standard
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
Arcade display	Raster, vertical

Pac-Man Plus is an arcade game released by Bally Midway in 1982, and it is the 4th title in the Pac-Man series of games. Like Ms. Pac-Man, this update to the original game was created without Namco's authorization.

Pac-Man Plus had the same basic goal of all of the early Pac-Man games: to eat all of the dots and pills before Pac-Man is caught by the ghosts. Just like the other early Pac-Man games, energizers (usually called power pills by fans of the games) could be eaten so that the ghosts would become vulnerable and turn blue for a short length of time.

Despite the game's cabinet's announcement of Pac-Man Plus being "Exciting! New!", Pac-Man Plus adds only minor tweaks. The maze itself has a greenish color instead of being blue. While eating the power pellets caused the ghosts to turn blue, they also became smaller and green flags appeared on their heads (this may have been done so the ghosts would be easier to see when they were blue. These flags are also have said to be apple stems^{[citation needed]}). Secondly, eating the power pellets could also cause "mystery" effects, such as only 3 of the 4 ghosts turning blue, the ghosts becoming invisible when turning blue, or the maze itself temporarily becoming invisible. Eating the game's "fruit" (which includes, among other things, what appears to be a can of Coca-Cola) also had the effect of eating an energizer, which, while turning the ghosts blue, would also turn them invisible, and the player would be awarded double the points that eating a normal energizer would.

[edit] Ports

Because there were so few differences between Pac-Man and Pac-Man Plus and because the game was released right before the Video game crash of 1983, Pac-Man Plus was never ported to home video game systems or computers. However, there have been efforts by some homebrew game developers to port Pac-Man Plus to classic game consoles such as the Atari 2600 [1], and more recently the Atari 5200 [2], and the Atari 7800 [3]. In addition, Jakks Pacific has released a new Pac-Man TV Games collection which features Pac-Man, Pac-Man Plus, Super Pac-Man, and Pac & Pal.[4]