Developer: GCC/Midway
Publisher: Namco
Release: November 1993
I just discovered something that I thought was impossible. I have stumbled across a version of Ms. Pac-Man that I don’t like. To me Ms. Pac-Man is one of the greatest games of all time, and just about every port is worth playing. I don’t just like most ports, I adore them. So it’s a bit shocking finding such a poorly done version published by Namco themselves. Of course Ms. Pac-Man has a very complicated history. It was developed by GCC and Midway instead of Namco, so it’s not a Namco game the same way Pac-Man or Dig Dug is. It originally came to the NES via a well-received unlicensed port released by Tengen. That’s the version most people have played, and they’re probably not aware another version even exists. I’m not exactly sure why Tengen was able to release so many famous games by big companies without Nintendo’s okay. I know that they were a division of Atari who had the rights to release many of these ports, but it’s still strange that they were essentially released illegally. This version of Ms. Pac-Man must’ve been Namco’s way of asserting their rights to the game after their agreement with Tengen expired. They released both this one and Pac-Man as official versions right at the end of the NES’s run. There are only a handful of third party games that came out later, and it came out just in time for what was basically the last Christmas for new NES games. The NES version is also the only one that needed a replacement. Tengen licensed their games legally on other consoles, and the handheld systems never got a Tengen version in the first place. So they had to do a port of a well-represented game on a dying console that nobody was going to play anyway. It’s not too hard to see why they didn’t put in much effort. It’s just a shame that they made the gamers pay the price.
Ms. Pac-Man seems simple. There’s a series of fixed mazes, a bunch of dots, Ms. Pac-Man herself, and four ghosts. Ports had been coming out since 1983 so they should’ve had it down to a science a decade later. However, everything just feels a little off in this version. This should look better than the older Tengen version, but the colors are drab and lifeless. They try to emulate the arcade version by having the vertical sidebar, but this just makes the mazes look squished. I appreciate the attempt, but the score display didn’t have to be that big. The smaller mazes are contrasted by a too-large Ms. Pac-Man with a bow that overlaps the maze itself. I don’t know why, but this might actually be what bugs me the most. It’s just distracting seeing that bow hang over everything. It gives me the impression that nobody cared enough to size the characters right. Even the intermissions seem a bit off. The familiar movie slate is replaced with plain text, and there’s something about the graphics that doesn’t sit right with me. They seem too round and move to human-like. Junior looks more like a baby xenomorph than a typical pac-baby. This is one game where the graphics need to be straighter and flatter.
These may sound like trivial nitpicks, but it can be distracting from the gameplay when you expect a certain experience and everything is just a little off. The sound is even messed up. When fruit appears on the screen you can no longer hear dots being eaten. That’s something that even the Atari 2600 got right. Of course, if it played well I could forgive the strange errors, but in a surprise to no one it does not. It’s very slow and unusually boring. Ms. Pac-Man moves like she really is getting her bow stuck in the maze, and the ghosts act like they only showed up for contractual reasons. It’s like they know nobody is going to play this, so they don’t put up much of an effort. The thrill of the chase is mostly gone. The ghosts rarely go into active pursuit and instead wander around aimlessly until they trap you. There is still some challenge, but it’s definitely the easiest version I’ve ever played on the default setting. Even switching it over to hard mode doesn’t up the challenge enough. It just seems to make the ghosts more frantically aimless.
I will say that after my initial shock died down, I went back and played it a bit more, and to give it the faintest praise it’s not a complete train wreck when I took it for what it was. It’s still Ms. Pac-Man deep down inside, and if you’re less familiar with the game you might be likely to overlook the shortcomings. I guess I’m just not used to the NES having the worst version of something. I’m sure this is not the only example especially in the later days when it started to get more ports from 16-bit games. Still, it’s jarring considering how many great versions of classic arcade game there are on NES. Even the very similar handheld versions are better. The Game Boy version fixes the sound while the Game Gear version has vibrant colors. I suppose that makes sense in a way because the Game Boy and Game Gear were the current handhelds and more likely to sell. I suppose the NES version is a bit like a bad Beatles cover. Even if it’s poorly done you know that it’s a great song. In a way that almost makes it worse.
The question now is do I put this in the bad section of my list? It’s honestly right on the boarder. I like it better than Mario’s Time Machine for sure, and it doesn’t belong down the true horrors of the system. Gyruss is another disappointing arcade port, but my expectations were lower with that game. It wasn’t that great to begin with. Ms. Pac-Man exists between the okay and the bad. Is pred a color? If so, this is the most pred game I’ve ever played. So if you really want to play a console version of Ms. Pac-Man you can play the NES version, but before you do I would recommend you check out the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, Atari Lynx, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, original Tengen NES, Game Boy, Game Gear, Namco Museum on any console, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and various compilation versions instead. But hey, if you can’t find any of these dozen or so versions than play the Namco NES port. It’s not very good, but I guess it works as a last resort.
NES quality percentage: 15/30
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