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As the bride of that most famous of single-celled
omniphage life forms, your job is pretty simple - eat all the dots, gulp the
large blinking dots in each corner of the screen and eat the monsters while
they're blue, and avoid the monsters the rest of the time. Occasionally various
fruits and other foods will bounce through the maze, and you can gobble those
for extra points. Every so often, just to give you a chance to relax, you'll
see a brief intermission chronicling the courtship of Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man (and
a little hint at who the next game would star).
(Bally/Midway [under license from Namco], 1982)
The first real sequel (excluding any altered pirate clones or enhancement
kits for the original Pac-Man) in the Pac-Universe, Ms. Pac-Man
added quite a few new twists to the original game without changing how
it's played. The new mazes, extra side tunnels (on some mazes), and
bouncing fruit were about the only things that could be changed without
drastically altering the game (though the later Jr.
Pac-Man addition of a scrolling maze was interesting).
The character of Ms. Pac-Man, such as it was, suddenly lent all sort of
motivations and personality to the original. A Bally pinball game, Mr. &
Mrs. Pac-Man, left no doubt as to what that relationship was, and a
disastrous video-pinball hybrid called Baby Pac-Man (also by Bally) and
Jr. Pac-Man left no doubt as to the results.
A new Ms. Pac-Man game, Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness, is in the works
for several consoles.
Atari redeemed themselves admirably with an extremely faithful Atari 2600
rendition of Ms. Pac-Man, featuring almost every nuance of its arcade
inspiration. Coleco also released a Ms. Pac-Man battery-powered tabletop
arcade game, and featured Ms. Pac in its line of Pac-toys.
She also played a prominent part in ABC's
short-lived Pac-Man Saturday morning cartoon and several children's
records released by KidStuff records. Numerous dolls, stickers, wristwatches,
and other merchandise were also graced by Ms. Pac's likeness.
Rating: 
A whole dollar - go trade it in for more quarters, you'll want to play
this game some more!
Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com editor/webmaster
The Coleco mini-arcade version.
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