Ms. Pac-Man: Maze Madness (2000)

A while back I had Pac-Man fever and wanted to play a bunch of Pac games... including this one (N64 version). This game is very, very... okay. In Maze Madness you play as Ms. Pac-Man, and it's just walking around through the mazes to collect dots and fruits. The clicking of her heels on the floor is super-loud for some reason, always made me think of a galloping horse.

At first I thought the game was all right, just as a "simple diversion to kill some time" sort of game. But the further I got in the game, the harder it became to want to keep going. At some point I, as Ms. Pac-Man, had a mid-life existential crisis and wondered just what am I doing going after dot after dot after dot. Are we not all trapped in a maze of our own device? We tell ourselves we'll go somewhere new one day... once we have earned enough stars. Will that day ever actually come though? It didn't for me, I can tell you that much.

A few weeks ago I received the StrikerDC Dreamcast controller I'd backed on Kickstarter, and it made me wish for something "new" to play on that trusty old console. There aren't a ton of must-have games left in my price range these days, but this looked reasonably fun and affordable, so I picked it up.

This game exactly met my expectations. It extends the typical Ms. Pac-Man dots and mazes into a larger, more varied experience involving puzzle-solving and platformer-esque enemies. Aside from the occasional head-scratching puzzle, most of its difficulty comes from its era-appropriate slippery controls and inconsistent hit boxes than from its mechanics or level design. But lives, hearts and checkpoints are plentiful, so it's easy to manage.

It is slightly irritating that the game claims not to support VGA output, yet it plays fine if you start it from Code Breaker or a similar disc. Even more annoying is the 50-star requirement to actually beat the game, which I fell far short of and wasn't really interested in pursuing further.

But I can't honestly say it's any worse than I was expecting: It was mostly a fun enough and relaxing time. It would have made a fine rental back in the day. Plus, the original arcade Ms. Pac-Man is included from the start, and that's still a great game to revisit today.

Platform:

Gameboy Advance version.

Graphics/Sound:

I chose the GBA version over the PS1/N64 one simply because I usually prefer top down 2D graphics over low poly 3D and also this one requires much less disk space. The graphics looked quite ok, I have to say, however, the sound is horribly scratchy on the GBA version

Gameplay:

This takes the pacman formula and adds some adventuresque dungeon structure to it with larger scrolling levels, and things like traps or moving blocks. I liked that the original Pacman ideas were still there. Like the ghosts chasing you until you eat a larger dot which makes you the predator for a while. The new aspects like moving blocks, using trampolins, using bombs and such were all implemented pretty well.

Difficulty:

The game is rather easy. I don't think I died once because my hp ran out. You can die on some stupid stuff like running into death blocks but apart from that it's more about finding your way through the labyrinth than trying to survive monsters.

This game is a nice idea, and a good use of the Ms. Pacman character. The game is easy to pick up, but in the end sometimes I wished it was a little more challenging. It gets old rather fast, but still a good puzzler to pass some time.