PC-Man

PC-Man is a clone of Pac-Man released for the IBM PC by Orion Software in 1982. The gameplay remains the same as in Pac-Man; players guide PC-Man through a maze with the goal of eating all of the dots while avoiding the four ghosts chasing him.

PC-Man faithfully recreates the Pac-Man arcade game and has the same gameplay. The game screen consists of a maze filled with dots along with four multi-colored ghosts that constantly chase PC-Man. If PC-Man comes into contact with any of the ghosts, a life is lost; the game ends when players have no more lives remaining. The goal on each level in the game is to eat all of the dots in the maze in order to proceed to the next, more difficult level.

PC-Man is, for the most part, defenseless against the ghosts and must simply avoid them. There, however, two items which can help out. First, located near each of the four corners are power pellets; when PC-Man eats one of these, the ghosts will temporarily become vulnerable and run from PC-Man instead of chase him. During this time PC-Man can eat the ghosts for bonus points as well. Additionally there is a tunnel at both the top and bottom of the screen; when ghosts travel through the tunnel their speed is slowed down however PC-Man's speed remains the same making them useful for evading ghosts in pursuit.

Points are earned in PC-Man by eating dots, power pellets, and the ghosts. When eating ghosts, each ghost increases in point value until all four ghosts are eaten or another power pellet is eaten which will reset the point amount. Additionally, a fruit occasionally appears near the center of the maze; eating the fruit (which changes from level to level) awards bonus points (more points are awarded on higher levels).

Unlike some Pac-Man clones, the maze used by PC-Man is the same as the one used by the original Pac-Man arcade game. However, since Pac-Man used a vertically oriented display the maze in PC-Man has been rotated 90° in order to fit better on the horizontally oriented IBM CGA display.