PacMan's Sex Change (Ms. Pacman (PC))

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Product:	Ms. Pacman (PC)
Date:	27/11/03 (70 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very fun, If it's the only incarnation available you'll still be racking up the high scores

Disadvantages: A blatant and official rip-off of the first, Ms PacMan looks rubbish

The very premise of writing a review on a 1980s arcade game, which can be easily downloaded in any number of formats, may seem a little silly and unnecessary however this is not the case. It is good. You probably only read this review because the title had 'sex' in it anyway.

The early 1982 arcade game PacMan, released by the retro genius company Namco, must be familiar to a large proportion of the world's citizens. The purpose was to guide a yellow disc man around a blue maze to eat all of the pill-shaped items in order to advance to the next level which looked quite similar. The adversaries of PacMan were four brightly coloured and occasionally surprisingly intelligent ghosts who could make him evaporate with a single touch, however the true genius and fun of the game came from eating the large pills in the far corners of the level; in plot twist worthy of the finest authors, Pac was now able to consume the attacking ghouls for a limited time and get his revenge.

Whether the game was an attempt to depict the dangerous yet exciting life of a twentieth century drug addict being pursued by the law or a rival street gang, or whether it was just easy to show something eating dots rather than more difficult to draw food, is unclear, however one thing is certain: Ms. PacMan was exactly the same game.

Now anyone who had an Amiga, Commodore, Spectrum, Atari, Amstrad or any of the early computers will likely have possessed at least four different rip-offs of PacMan, all of which had been made in the late 1980s or early 1990s and were a lot better in terms of level design and enjoyment. I personally played PacMan Deluxe, Extreme PacMan, MouthMan and even Jungle Jim on a regular basis, however it was not until recently that I had the opportunity to try Ms. PacMan, the official sequel to the original.

I was very disappointed with this game as far from being a definitive successor in its own right it was the exact same game where
everything just looked a little different. The monsters' eyes and colours had been slightly modified from the red, orange, pink and blue of the original while the female PacMan looked very poor indeed. Where her featureless husband had presented an easy character with which to play, Ms Pacman's heavily made-up eye, lips and cheek distract from the gameplay and do not fit well on to the yellow face. Even the animations between every level pair are the same, while the fact that she is a female has no effect on the gameplay whatsoever. An interesting twist and plot should have been added to the end of the game, in which it turns out that Mr PacMan was simply masquerading as a female by putting on unconvincing make-up; as I have never completed this game I'm not sure whether Namco may have already set up this shocker conclusion. This difficulty is certainly a feature common to many arcade games as they are often very addictive due to their difficulty and avant-garde style. That's right, I used 'avant-garde'.

Overall, still a very fun and classic game, however the modification of PacMan into a woman seems irrelevant and highly distracting. Not in a sexual way though as I am not strange.

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