One of the early arcade classics of the early 1980s, Pac-Man is practically an institution in classic arcade gaming and is a popular franchise in its own right. We’ve all played it, we all know about it, and so there’s really no reason to go into the history of the whole deal. Most Atari gamers are also aware of the poor translation of Pac-Man that their beloved Atari 2600 received and make no mistake, this was a poor port by every extent of the word… although I have to admit, it’s not as terrible as most people perceived, but I digress.
Eventually, Atari learned their lesson and gave 2600 owners a decent (read: much improved) port of Ms. Pac-Man and then later ported Jr. Pac-Man over to the console in 1984. Of course, by the time the game rolled around in 1987, Nintendo came along and dominated the market. In fact, chances are few people got the chance to play this game. And that’s a shame because this game is actually very good and the best of the three… yes, even better than Ms. Pac-Man.
Jr. Pac-Man follows the same formula as its predecessors; as the junior of the Pac family, you have to clear the maze of dots while avoiding the ghosts. You can still collect power pellets to turn ghosts blue so you can eat them and you can still collect the bouncing toys that appears on occasion. It’s pretty standard fare, except for the fact that the maze is taller (wider in the arcade original) and that toys will make dots fat, causing Junior to slow down somewhat when he eats them. These are a couple minor changes, but they really change up the gameplay for the most part, especially when compared to Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man.
Graphically speaking, this is typical 2600 quality – generally blocky maze background and very crude sprites. However, as crude as the sprites may be, they at least resemble the Jr Pac-Man (with spinning propeller hat – nice touch) and ghosts… and the toys aren’t too shabby either. The sound in this game is also fairly decent along with a nice little start-up jingle that is pleasing to the ears.
One thing I’ve noticed is that Junior plays a little faster than previous Pac outings and that may add to the overall challenge a bit. You can alter the number of ghosts that appear if you so desire and you can also select the maze to play in. There’re seven mazes in all and you don’t repeat any of them until you’ve played them all – unlike Ms. Pac-Man, which had four mazes but required you to play one maze a few times before moving on to the next… or Pac-Man which had one single solitary maze.
Overall, this seems to be a fun little game and a top-notch version of an arcade game that you’ll most likely never see a re-release of ever again due to its dubious status as an unauthorized Pac-Man release. For an Atari 2600 game, it’s actually pretty impressive what they were able to pull off here and I recommend this game to anyone looking for a solid game on the classic woodgrain Atari.
BREAKDOWN
Graphics: 6/10 (typical blocky graphics that somewhat resembles Pac-Boy and ghosts – not bad, actually)
Sound: 9/10 (a few blips and beeps – nice jingle that doesn’t sound offensive.)
Gameplay: 8/10 (traditional Pac formula augmented with new larger mazes and a couple extra bonuses)
Challenge: 7/10 (good variety of mazes, game does seem faster than previous Pac outings – hence a good challenge)
Replay Value: 7/10 (good number of options present, as replayable as any Pac-Man)
OVERALL: 7/10
dtm666 