Mrs pacman
Ms. Pac-Man is an arcade video game produced by Midway as an unauthorized sequel to Pac-Man. It was released in North America in 1981 and became one of the most popular video games of all time, leading to its adoption by Pac-Man licenser Namco as an official title. This game introduces a female protagonist, new maze designs and several minor gameplay changes over the original game.
Gameplay
The gameplay of Ms. Pac-Man is largely identical to that of the original Pac-Man. The player gathers points by eating dots and avoiding ghosts (contact with one loses a life). Power-pellets or energizers change the ghosts, which reverse their course and can be eaten for bonus points. Fruit bonuses can be consumed for increasing point values, twice per level. As the levels increase, the speed and difficulty increase as well.
There are, however, some notable differences:
- The game has four different mazes that appear in different sets of colors. Most of the new mazes have two sets of warp tunnels.
- The ghosts' behavior patterns are different and include semi-random movement, precluding the use of pre-set patterns to beat each level.
- Instead of appearing in the center of the maze, fruits bounce around the maze, entering and leaving through the warp tunnels. Once all fruits have been encountered, they appear in random sequence rather than the last fruit repeating.
- The orange ghost's name is Sue instead of Clyde.
- The three intermissions have changed to follow the developing relationship between Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man (from when they first meet to having a stork drop off their baby).
As in Pac-Man, the game has a bug in the subroutine that draws the fruit, which renders the 256th level unplayable. However, the game also has other bugs that cause it to crash or become unplayable much sooner, making it impossible to reach the 256th level without an emulator.
History
Ms. Pac-Man was originally conceived as a bootlegged hack of Pac-Man called Crazy Otto, created by programmers employed at the General Computer Corporation (GCC).
The programmers, surprised at the quality of the game they had created, showed it to Midway, Namco's American distributor of the original game. Midway had become impatient in waiting for Namco to release its next Pac-Man game (which would be Super Pac-Man), and were enthusiastic that such a game had come to their attention. They bought the rights to Crazy Otto, changed the sprites to fit the Pac-Man universe, renamed the game Ms. Pac-Man, and released it into arcades.
After the
game became wildly popular, Midway and GCC undertook a brief legal battle
concerning royalties, but because the game was accomplished without Namco's
consent, both companies eventually turned over the rights of Ms. Pac-Man to Namco, fearing a
lawsuit. Nonetheless, Ms. Pac-Man
was the first of a series of unauthorized sequels that eventually led to the
termination of the licensing agreement between Namco and Midway.[2] Ms. Pac-Man was later released on the third
In 2001, Namco released an arcade board featuring both Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga in honor of the 20th anniversary of both games. It also features Pac-Man as a hidden bonus game. The later 25th Anniversary Edition allows all three games to be selected at the main menu.
Ms. Pac-Man in popular culture
In film and television
- Ms. Pac-Man is a central character in the Pac-Man animated TV series, where she is named Pepper and is Pac-Man's wife.
- A Ms. Pac-Man machine is the basis of a storyline in the Friends episode The One Where Joey Dates Rachel. The plot line revolves around Chandler entering crude words onto the game's high-score screen and then have Phoebe attempt to beat his scores (thus removing them) before Ross's seven year old son Ben arrives.
- A Ms. Pac-Man machine is the focus of several scenes in episode "My Own Private Practice Guy" of the TV show Scrubs. The Todd comments "Oh Ms. Pac-man I would sex that bow right off your head. Eat those dots you naughty, naughty girl." Dr. Kelso is also an expert at the game, with an impossibly high score of 40,000,000.
- In an episode of the animated series Futurama, "Anthology of Interest II", in Fry's video game inspired segment Ms. Pac-Man appears after her husband, General Colin Pac-Man, is killed by a laser bolt from a Space Invader. Fry then asks Amy to "tend to the Widow Pac-Man".
- In the Drawn Together episode "Gay Bash", Xandir meets Pac-Man (with whom he is friends with) at a gay party. Believing Ms. Pac-Man to be his ex-wife, Xandir tells him to keep his gay secret between them (as Ms. Pac-Man is best friends with Xandir's girlfriend). However, it is revealed that Ms. Pac-Man is actually Pac-Man in drag.
- In an episode of the animated series Family Guy titled "Meet the Quagmires," Peter Griffin is shown playing Menstrual Ms. Pac-Man when he goes back in time to the 80s.
- In the film Wayne's World, based on the popular SNL sketch Wayne's World, Wayne (Mike Myers) asks the owner of a large arcade chain, Noah Vanderhoff, what the difference between Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man is, "really", to which Noah replies "Well, she has a bow on her head.", prompting Wayne to hold up a card saying "This man has no penis".
- In the hit TV show Weeds - Season 5 Episode 6, Andy Botwin goes crazy after his sister in law Nancy Botwin leaves him a goodbye note and walks out of his life. He then goes and buys himself a personal arcade with his conned money, to get over his depression . He is seen playing Ms. Pac-Man for most of the episode, both dazed and confused. When being asked a question he replies, "It feels right you know. She gets me. We're in sync. No words, just a gentle touch of my hand. I move left, she moves left. I move right, she moves right. Yes! Power pellet! Die Blinky Die! Come here Sue, you filthy little ghost whore".
- In the 2005 film Are We There Yet?, Lindsay (Aleisha Allen) reveals to Nick (Ice Cube) that Kevin (Philip Daniel Bolden) played Ms. Pac-Man at the mall and had nightmares for a week.
