Ms. Pac-Man (Tengen) – NES

I still find it amazing that one of the greatest, and most famous arcade games of all time started out life as an unauthorized hack of another legendary arcade game.  These games are Pac-Man, and it’s unauthorized sequel Ms. Pac-Man.  Ms. Pac-Man is based of Namco’s Pac-Man, and released to the arcades in 1982 by Bally/Midway.  This NES port was released by Tengen in 1990 for the NES.  The timing of this was very interesting, because everyone was moving on from the early 1980’s arcade games, and focusing on beat-em-ups, shoot-em-ups, and platformers.  I should also note that there are two versions of Ms. Pac-Man on the NES, this one released by Tengen, and another released by Namco themselves later on.  They both have some big differences, so keep that in mind.

There isn’t much to say about the gameplay of Ms. Pac-Man that hasn’t been said before.  You control Ms. Pac-Man, and the goal is to eat all of the dots in the maze.  One tough from the ghosts will cost you a life, but you can temporarily turn the tables by eating one of the four power pellets.  Additions to the original Pac-Man include additional mazes, and bonus fruit that bounces around the maze.  This port of Ms. Pac-Man is similar to the Sega Genesis port in that it contains options to play in even more mazes, and play at different speeds.  I had great fun test my Pac-Man skills by turning the difficulty up.  Ms. Pac-Man even by itself has infinite replayability, and these options give it even more replayability if that’s even possible.

Unlike the Sega Genesis port, the NES port of Ms. Pac-Man keeps the arcade style graphics, and they look really accurate.  Unfortunately that comes at a cost of having to have the maze scroll during game play.  You will get used to it quickly though.  The sound effects aren’t quite the same as the arcade, but they sound pretty close.  The most important part of any Pac-Man game is the control, and this version nailed it perfectly.  To sum it all up, this may be the definitive version of Ms. Pac-Man, and even to this day it can be enjoyed by everyone.

Rating – 9 / 10