Ms. Pac-Man

Ms. Pac-Man is an action game originally released in arcades in 1982 and was also ported to numerous home computers and game consoles. It is the sequel to Pac-Man and the gameplay remains almost identical, however a few new features and changes were added. Ms. Pac-Man was enormously successful and is often considered the most popular video game of all time.

Like in the original Pac-Man, the goal of the game is to eat all of the dots in a maze while avoiding the four ghosts; if one of the ghosts catches Ms. Pac-Man, a life is lost and the game ends when the player has no more remaining lives. In each corner of the maze are power pellets; when Ms. Pac-Man eats one of these, the ghosts temporarily turn blue and are no longer a threat (the player can earn bonus points for eating ghosts while blue). On some sides of the screen are warp tunnels which transport the player to the opposite side of the screen; if a ghost follows through the tunnel they are unable to move as fast allowing the player to use them to escape. Once all of the dots in the maze have been eaten, the player continues to the next level. As the levels progress, the difficulty is increased by increasing the overall game speed and the duration the ghosts remain blue after eating a power pellet is shortened (eventually disappearing altogether). While overall gameplay remains the same as Pac-man, there are some differences added to Ms. Pac-Man; some of the more notable changes include the following:

• The maze layout has changed; additionally, there are four different mazes instead of just one which repeats. Each maze is a different color, and the mazes alternate after each of the games intermission scenes.
• The logic for the four ghosts has been updated. Some random movements are also included to prevent the ghosts from following predictable patterns like in the original Pac-Man.
• The fruit and other bonus items do not remain stationary in the middle of the maze; instead, they bounce around the maze in random directions. Once all of the fruits have been encountered, they reappear in random order for the remainder of the game.
• Three of the four mazes have two sets of warp tunnels instead of just one.
• The opening musical theme and the sounds effects have been updated.