Namco
Ms. Pac-Man TV Games
by JAKKS Pacific, Inc.

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So, after installing 4 AA batteries, I was ready to fire the game up for the first time....and here is where the problems began.

The first game to come up on the menu is Ms. Pac-Man.  So, I selected it and started to play.  Ms. Pac-Man seems to be a pretty decent translation of the coin-op game, but for some reason, I couldn't move down.  No matter how much I tried to wiggle that joystick around, I could not move down.

Well, OK.  Things happen.  I figured I just had a bad joystick and I would return the unit for another one.  In the meantime, I went on to try the other games.

Mappy is more or less "dead-on" in terms of the translation.  I was really surprised at how well this game turned out.  The sounds, graphics, and gameplay are incredibly close (but not identical) to the original coin-op.  However, for some reason, they did not scale the game to fit the full screen.  There is some scrolling up and down as you play, and quite frankly, it was giving me a headache.  I don't understand how this game could not be scaled properly like the other ones.

Galaga was next.  It is not as good as Mappy, but it is a fair translation of the original.  The game speed seems sluggish, and the sounds are off.  Gameplay is identical to the coin-op, and the graphics are almost identical.

Then, I went on to Pole Position.  On the surface, it looks be a decent translation of the game.  Twisting the joystick left and right works fairly well for driving the car.  However, the gameplay just doesn't measure up to the arcade original.  First off, the timings of the game seem off.  The original coin-op is a game that I still play to this day.  I know exactly when and where to shift up/down  & where to make the break entering turns.  None of that knowledge helped me here.  This is where you are probably thinking that I am being too hard on the game.  My feeling is this...if you market these games as the originals, they had better look, feel, and play EXACTLY as the originals.

Also, in the original Pole Position coin-op, if time runs out, you slowly roll to a stop.  If you roll over the finish line before you come to a stop, the counter starts over and you get another lap.  No so in this version.  There is a hard counter, and even if you roll over the finish line after the counter runs out, the game is over.

At this point, I took the batteries out of the unit & put it back in the box.  The next day, I went back to the game store and explained the controller problem.  I walked out with a new unit and set home to try it out.

Ms. Pac-Man worked much better this time.  The joystick seemed much more responsive than my original unit did.

Then, I went back to play some more Pole Position.  I started the game, and noticed that my car wouldn't turn at all.  Not left, not right.  Nothing.  I twisted that joystick like a madman and nothing happened.

Mappy

Ms. Pac-Man Click on images to enlarge

Pole Position

I was willing to live with the first failure.  I am aware that sometimes, things just are bad out of the box.  However, the second failure really annoyed me.

So, I went on to try Xevious before I returned the second unit.  Nothing major to mention here.  I would rate the translation as average.

So, back to the game store again to return the second unit.  I asked the employee if their had been a high rate of returns on these, and I was told that, to the best of her knowledge, I was the only person to buy them so far.

Conclusion:

Like I said above, the failure of not one, but two of these units really annoyed me.  I was willing to live with the first failure, but the second one pushed me over the edge.

Despite the ergonomic improvement in the controller case, and the awesome translation of Mappy, I can't get past the fact that I currently have a 66% failure rate on these units, and it has affected the overall score in a major way.  In the span of three days, I had problems with two units.  I am on my third one right now.  So far, it has been OK.

What kills me is that Jakks Pacific and their developers keep coming up with great ideas for these units and just can't seem to follow through properly on any of them.  The "twisty" action in the joystick for Pole Position is a brilliant idea.  It is too bad that it did not work at all on the second unit I picked up.

I am very worried about the upcoming Atari Paddle game, Capcom game, and Midway game that Jakks will be releasing later this year.  Jakks Pacific needs to find some way to improve their manufacturing/quality control and improve the translation of these games if they expect to succeed with the classic gaming community.

The documentation is extremely limited.  A single page about how to install the batteries & hook up the unit.  A second page explains the 5 games.

Ms. Pac-Man TV Games is available now in stores for $19.95 

Visit the Jakks Pacific TV Games web site
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