Collection essentials #15: Ms. Pac-Man (2600)

 

Ms. Pac-Man in arcades in many ways, amazingly, overshadowed the original, and that’s something I’m probably going to talk about when I get to a different version of the game. For now, I want to focus on this particular Atari version, and what a remarkably better job they did than when they ported the original game. As I said last time, the Atari hardware was pretty weak and becoming more and more outdated. There was no way that Pac-Man or Ms. Pac-Man were going to have anything close to an accurate arcade transition onto Atari. But this version of Ms. Pac-Man truly exposes how badly they dropped the ball when porting the original Pac-Man, which was bad enough to the point where it helped cause Atari’s downfall. For Ms. Pac-Man, an effort was actually made to represent Ms. Pac-Man well. The fruit is actually fruit, the colors of the fruit and ghosts are actually accurate, the ghosts still have to flicker a little but nowhere nearly as bad as the first game, and the little tune that plays when you start a new game is present. Pac-Man on Atari feels like a cheap knock-off, while this actually feels like a proper representation of the source material. Now, sadly, by the time this game came out, the video game crash of 1983 was already well underway, and this game really didn’t make a splash at all and didn’t reverse the fortunes of the industry. Perhaps many knew how disappointing the first Pac-Man was and didn’t bother. So as a result, Ms. Pac-Man for Atari is far less remembered than its ugly duckling older brother despite being far better. Ms. Pac-Man is one of my favorites, and this may not be a go-to version but it’s still impressive and a fun little alternate version to revisit on occasion.