Ms. Pac-Man review: the sequel that out-thought the original

Ms. Pac-Man eats dots in a maze while four ghosts chase her. If that sounds exactly like the game before it, that is the trick. It looks familiar enough to walk right up to, and different enough to beat you the first time you try.

It broke the patterns on purpose

By the early eighties, serious Pac-Man players had worked out routes: exact paths through the maze that the ghosts could never catch. Once you learned one, the game turned into a memory test. Ms. Pac-Man changed that with a single decision. Its ghosts use semi-random movement, which prevents the use of patterns to clear a round. You cannot run a script anymore. You have to watch the ghosts and react, which is what the original felt like before people solved it.

The orange ghost even got a new name, Sue, as if to warn you that nobody here was the same.

The best thing a sequel can do is take away the shortcut players found in the first game.

Four mazes instead of one

Where Pac-Man had one maze, this game has four mazes that rotate as you progress. Most of them have two sets of warp tunnels, so escape routes change from board to board, and you are always relearning where safety lives. The walls are drawn solid rather than as outlines, which makes the paths easier for a newcomer to see. Small change, big difference for the kid standing on his toes to see the screen.

The American one

Ms. Pac-Man began life as a modification kit called Crazy Otto, and it was the first game in the series not made by Namco. That history explains why so many of us think of it as the American Pac-Man. It is listed as one of the most successful American arcade games ever made, and it stayed around long after the other machines of its era were hauled away. You found it at pizza places, laundromats, bowling alleys and the back corner of the grocery store. For a lot of American families, this was the cabinet parents and kids both played.

Playing it today

It holds up better than almost anything from the period. The controls are the same simple joystick, the rules take one sentence, and the ghosts still surprise you. If you have played only the original, try this one next. Most people who do stay with it.