00:20Pac-Man
00:20Pac-Man was a revolutionary arcade game that paved the way for many, many maze games in the 80's.
00:25The Atari 2600 version was crap.
00:28The arcade version of Ms. Pac-Man was even better than its predecessor and the Atari version did justice to
00:34its counterpart despite the console's limitations.
00:37Then Junior Pac-Man came onto the arcade scene in 1983.
00:41It was released by Midway without Namco's permission and so the game technically isn't recognized as part of the Pac
00:47-Man franchise.
00:48The only port was released on the Atari 2600 in 1987, long after the prime of the console.
00:55As the title would suggest, you're Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man's son, Junior Pac-Man.
01:00The gameplay is essentially the same as its predecessors.
01:03Only Junior Pac-Man has an animated helicopter hat on his head and the bouncing fruit is replaced with toys
01:09and such.
01:10Instead of chasing apples and oranges, Junior's bouncing targets consist of a bicycle, a kite, a drum, a balloon, a
01:17train, a glass of root beer, and I think that's a cat.
01:21Unlike the other Atari versions where the entire maze is on the screen at one time, the mazes in this
01:27game are much bigger so they scroll up and down.
01:29The game moves a lot faster too, even in the easier difficulties which just changes the amount of ghosts from
01:35anywhere between 1 and 4.
01:38The faster pace combined with the scrolling screen might not be for everyone, as I remember my mother being a
01:43big fan of Ms. Pac-Man but Junior Pac-Man made her dizzy.
01:47So I guess this reaction just depends on whether or not the player gets nauseous easily.
01:52Now like I said, the game is pretty fast, and you might even say that it's a little bit too
01:56fast.
01:56I personally think that the speed could have been tweaked a little bit, but it's really not a big deal.
02:02One thing the high speed does is make the ghosts a lot harder than on Ms. Pac-Man, especially since
02:06more than 50% of the maze isn't in view.
02:08But if the difficulty is a problem for you, adjust the settings to take the ghost countdown.
02:13A minor addition are the larger pellets that show up in some spots that'll slow you down.
02:19And now the invincibility power pellets won't always be placed in the obvious four corners.
02:23They got pretty creative with this one.
02:25The mazes are colorful, have excellent design, and instead of having each of them repeat once, forcing you to beat
02:32two levels of the same maze before you see a new one, this time each level will be a completely
02:36new maze.
02:37There was only one maze in Pac-Man, four in Ms. Pac-Man, and now seven in Jr. Pac-Man.
02:43It's really hard for me to say whether or not this is truly better than Ms. Pac-Man.
02:47I guess it depends on which pace you like more, how much of a challenge you're after, and whether or
02:52not the moving screen will inspire you to vomit.
02:54Both games are fantastic and accurate ports that do justice to the legendary franchise, while the first one just plain
03:01sucked.
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