Ms. Pac-Man:
Quest for the Golden Maze

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Last year, Infogrames (formerly Hasbro Interactive) licensed a number of classic Namco coin-op games for publication on the PC, and several console platforms.  So far, we have seen a few of those Namco classics hit the streets.  Last year, games such as Galaga & Pac-Man were given a facelift, and released to the public, with mixed results.  Pac-Man: Adventures In Time turned out to be a fantastic game, and it was given a 90% rating by this web site.  Galaga: Destination Earth, on the other hand, is better off not being mentioned.  It was that bad.

This year, Infogrames is releasing two more titles from their Namco license:  Ms. Pac-Man & Dig-Dug.

Ms. Pac-Man: Quest for the Golden Maze is available for PC's running Windows 95/98/Me.

I had high hopes for Ms. Pac-Man: Quest for the Golden Maze.  After playing the incredible update for Pac-Man last year, I felt that this title had the potential to be bigger & better.

Imagine my surprise when I open the box, and see that the game was not developed by the same team as Pac-Man: Adventures In Time.  Creative Asylum had nothing to do with Ms. Pac-Man.  Creature Labs is the group behind this game, and since I was not familiar with them, I decided to cruise by their web site.  Strangely, there was not one mention of this game anywhere on their web site.

Anyway, on to the installation of the game, which was pretty straightforward.  There were no problems whatsoever as the game checked for a proper DirectX installation, etc.

Ms. Pac-Man: Quest for the Golden Maze Click to enlarge

Once the installation was done, I selected the resolution for the game, color depth, etc.  Again, no problems here as the game properly detected my Asus GeForce2 GTS card, and I was able to play the game at high resolutions with 32-bit color.

Then, I started the game.  I expected the usual introduction animated video that has become commonplace with these classic game re-releases.  Well, there was no video at all, at I am not complaining about that.  The game just launched to a main menu, which allowed you to start the game, select controllers & other game options, etc.

According to the manual, Professor Pac-Man told Ms. Pac-Man the story of the mysterious "Golden Maze" which is hidden in the "Temple of Dots" located in the ancient land of Cleopactra.  The legend states that only a truly great "Pacventurer" can conquer the haunted mazes and discover the "Golden Maze."  Ms. Pac feels she is up for the job, so she sets off for Cleopactra in search of this mythical maze.

OK, so the story is a bit on the lame side, but I guess that is OK.  We are mostly concerned about gameplay, are we not?

Well, once you start the game, you do feel like you are playing Ms. Pac-Man.  You must guide Ms. Pac-Man around a maze, and eat all of the pellets that can be found.  Four Ghosts (Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Sue) wander the maze, and attempt to get you.  If you touch a ghost, you lose a life.  Ms. Pac has a few tricks up her sleeve to use against the ghosts, such as Power Pellets, which give her a burst of strength that she can use to eat the ghosts.

Several new twists have been added from the original Ms. Pac-Man coin-op.  There is a fifth ghost in this game.  The "Baby Ghost" is much smaller than the rest of the ghosts, and she is vulnerable to Ms. Pac-Man all of the time.  If Ms. Pac eats the "Baby Ghost," a new power-up item will appear in the maze.  Power-up items include:

• Speed-Up:  Ms. Pac-Man moves much faster

• Invulnerability:  Ms. Pac-Man cannot be killed by ghosts

• Rainbow:  Freezes all of the ghosts in the maze

• Pac-Army:  Many Pacs quickly enter the maze & eliminate the ghosts

• Magnet:  Ms. Pac-Man becomes magnetic, and pellets in the surrounding area are drawn to her

All power-up items last for a short period of time.

Like the Pac-Man coin-op, various types of bonus food will randomly march through the maze.  Eating the bonus food (which is generally pretzels, various types of fruit, etc.) will earn bonus points.  If you eat the same type of bonus food three times in a row, you earn a trip to a "Warp Room" bonus maze.  Bonus mazes contain no ghosts, but they do have a timer.  If you clear the maze before time runs out , you earn "golden fruit."  If you collect three "golden fruit," you take a trip to a "Golden Warp Room."  This maze does have one ghost chasing you.  If you can clear the "Golden Warp Room" before time runs out, you earn 50,000 and an extra life.

The mazes contain other bonus items as well.  Bonuses include:

• 3x: All points that Ms. Pac-Man scores for a short period will be worth three times their normal value

• 5x: All points that Ms. Pac-Man scores for a short period will be worth five times their normal value

• 10x:  All points that Ms. Pac-Man scores for a short period will be worth ten times their normal value

• Time Extender: This bonus, which will work until Ms. Pac-Man loses a life or enters a warp room, increases the time that the power-up items (mentioned above) stay active

• Fruitifier: Turns all of the pellets in the maze into small bunches of grapes, which are worth 300 points each

Extra lives are earned at 10,000 points, 100,000 points, 1,000,000 points, and every time you clear a "Golden Warp Room."

A special two-player mode of the game is available as well.  A "red" and a "blue" Ms. Pac-Man are placed in a maze with pellets.  The player to eat the most pellets is the winner.  The "Baby Ghost" can be found in the two-player game, although none of the other ghosts are present.

So all in all, the gameplay is here.  The basic rules of Ms. Pac-Man are still here, and a few extra twists have been thrown in to bring the game up to modern standards.  

Infogrames is marketing this as a "budget" title, so the game lacks a lot of the "flash" & beauty of the previous Pac-Man: Adventures in Time game.  I'm sure some people won't like that, but in a way, it gives the game more of a "classic" feel.

Ms. Pac-Man: Quest for the Golden Maze Click to enlarge

Visually, the game is just average. Take a look at the screen captures on this page.  I am using a high-end video card (Asus GeForce 2 GTS) at 1024x768, and a lot of things on the screen have a "blocky" look to them, such as the font, and the fruit status bar in the lower left corner. Clearly, this game isn't as pretty to look at as Pac-Man: Adventures In Time.

The game can be played from several viewing perspectives, including a "top down" mode similar to the original coin-op, and a number of 3D modes.  The scheme for altering the camera perspectives is a little weird.  You must pause the game, and select which mode you want to view, and then un-pause the game.  I would have preferred to see "on the fly" perspective changes by hitting a hot-key during gameplay.

I had no major problems with the controls during the game.  I used a Microsoft Sidewinder, and the controls felt very responsive.  There are a few points later on in the game where a arcade 4-way joystick would be better.  As the mazes get more complicated, the corners are short & tight.

I have two major complaints about this game. The first is the sound & music. They are just awful. NONE of the sounds from the original coin-op have been included in this game.  As for music, the tune during the first intermission on the coin-op has been "jazzed up" a bit, and is used when selecting items at the main menu.  This game has some of the worst sounds I have heard in any game.

For example, Ms. Pac eating the pellets sounds like a machine gun.  Eating a ghosts sounds like you stepped in something gooey.  The music isn't even close to being appropriate for the different game environments. (Note that the sounds are nothing more than some .WAV files in the \SOUNDS directory. I'm sure that some clever person will try replacing the sounds with some sampled sounds from the original coin-op.)

It is a shame that audio is so horrible, because all of the great gameplay from the original Ms. Pac-Man coin-op is here in this game.  Audio appears to have been treated as an afterthought.  Using sampled sounds from the coin-op, along with some new enhanced sounds for the new parts of the game would have been the preferred way to go.  

My other major complaint is that yellow border around the screen. It is ugly, distracting, and just plain annoying. The worst part is that there is no real need for the border, and you can't turn it off. As a result, the game only fills 2/3 of the screen. Granted, there is a score display, and other game info that is shown in the border, but it easily could have been handled with a status display at the top of the screen, similar to what was used in Pac-Man: Adventures In Time.

Maybe the border was meant to simulate the artwork that is painted on the glass that sits over the monitor on the Ms. Pac-Man coin-op.  I don't know that for sure.  At least there should have been some control to shut it off so the game could fill the entire screen.  I'm sure people with smaller monitors will not like the border at all.

The manual is OK.  It consists of the usual jewel-case insert, and it does have all of the information needed to play the game.  The manual is just under 30 pages long.

I found the ending of the game to be a bit disappointing.  The "Golden Maze" is nothing more than an intricate & complicated maze with no power pellets, so you have almost no defenses against the ghosts...except the bonuses you can earn my eating the "Baby Ghost."  There is a very short video after you finish the maze that shows Ms. Pac-Man jumping around, and that is the end of the game.

I was hoping for something special at the end of the game.  I was looking for something similar to what happened at the end of Breakout, or maybe an emulated version of the original Ms. Pac-Man coin-op would be unlocked and made available to play.  Sadly, I had no such luck.  Once you finish the entire game, the credits roll, and that's it.

Conclusion:

When I do my ratings, I factor in "value" just as much as the various aspects of the game.  In my opinion, getting what you paid for is just as important as the other aspects I use to rate a game.

Granted, this game isn't near as good as the Pac-Man: Adventures In Time game that was released in 2000.  However, the MSRP is only $19.95, which means you will probably see it on store shelves for $15.  A lot of the nice little "extras" made the Pac-Man game a winner have been left out of this title.  However, the Ms. Pac game only costs half as much, and the gameplay is still there.

I'm glad to see that this game sticks with the original Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-Man formula for scoring.  So many of the classic re-releases have messed with the classic formula of competing for points and high score by putting too much emphasis on completion of levels or goals.  Midway's new Spy Hunter game for the PlayStation 2 would be a good example of how to ruin a game by changing the focus away from scoring points.

I think the thing that annoys me so much is that this game could have had a higher rating sounds hadn't been botched so badly.  I can't understand why none of the original sounds were used.  That "machine gun" noise of Ms. Pac eating dots is just plain annoying.  

An item that is missing from this game is some kind of historical information.  Ms. Pac-Man: Guest for the Golden Maze was released roughly twenty years after the original coin-op game hit the arcades.  It would have been nice to have included some historical information on the original game to commemorate that anniversary.  Perhaps an emulated version of the original arcade game could have been included.

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