Arcade Maze Game Review: Pac-Man Plus

Pac-Man Plus is a weird game. It is a conversion kit that acts as an upgrade for the classic arcade maze game Pac-Man. 

Two arcade games in the Pac-Man series were developed between the release of this game in 1983, not including the two Pac-Man pinball tables. Both Ms. Pac-Man by General Computer Corporation and Super Pac-Man by Namco were quite different than the original game. Pac-Man Plus, created by Bally/Midway, is simply Pac-Man with faster, more aggressive ghosts and some other tweaks.

The music and sound effects are identical between the original and Plus iterations. The part that makes this an upgrade, is, above all, slightly altered graphics in comparison to the classic game. The maze layouts haven't changed except for the fact that they are now green rather than blue. The ghosts are now shorter with closer set eyes, and strangely, now are apparently fruit since they have stems with leaves on their heads. On the subject of fruit, the items that appear periodically in the center of the maze have now been changed to other items.

The aforementioned items do have a use beyond a point bonus this time around. When they are collected, ghosts will become invisible signifying the ability for Pac-Man to chomp them up. If Pac-Man eats a ghost in this state, its point value is doubled. Pac-Man's other method of eating ghosts, the power pellets, now are a bit wonky. Occasionally, eating one will cause weird effects such as turning the maze walls invisible or only turning a maximum of three ghosts blue rather than four. The latter will lower the possible point chain and will disrupt the usual ghost pattern.

Pac-Man Plus is essentially nothing more than a more difficult game of Pac-Man. The graphics have been tweaked, though the music and sound effects are identical to the original. The biggest changes are the fact that the ghosts are faster and nastier. The ability of the bonus item to make ghosts vulnerable with double the point value is a welcome addition to clear the maze and rank up points. This is especially needed considering the weird power pellets which occasionally reduce the amount of ghosts that were turned blue, which in turn lowers the amount of points that can be collected. Pac-Man Plus isn't really a must-play compared to the first two Pac-Man games. It has been ignored by Namco and its licensees, undoubtably for this reason, until Arcade1Up began adding it to its lineup of games in some of its home cabinets. If you have access to it, give it a try, but there is no need to go out of your way to track this one down.

Final Verdict:

3 out of 5