Jr. Pac-Man (Arcade Review)

Happy birthday, Jr. Pac-Man. On August 13, the game turns forty years old!

Jr. Pac-Man hasn’t gotten a whole lot of love in the four decades since its release. In part because Junior was developed by General Computer and not Namco, but big deal! So was Ms. Pac-Man, and that got ported to over twenty-five different platforms. Do you know how many ports Jr. Pac-Man got? Three. It got a couple home computer ports in 1988 and an Atari 2600 port that I covered in Atari 50: The Games They Couldn’t Include. After that? Nothing. Oh, plans were made. Like the sublime Atari 5200 port, which could have very well been the best game ever coded for the platform? Along with Super Pac-Man 5200, it didn’t even get released despite being 100% finished. In 2006, Junior was set to be included in a Jakks Pacific plug-and-play centered around the godawful Super Pac-Man, but then things between General Computer and Namco deteriorated and.. well, here we are. Of course, that doesn’t explain why Junior got snubbed BEFORE the bad blood started. The reason typically accepted is Jr. Pac-Man wasn’t as well received by anyone in 1983: operators, players, or critics. It was a bit of a flop, with many fans of Pac-Man feeling it was a vastly inferior sequel. Today, Jr. Pac-Man is banished from gaming’s collective consciousness. And that, my friends, is a bona fide gaming tragedy. This might be the most underrated sequel of the Golden Age of Arcades.

I don’t know why this one hurts more than many others, but it does. There is NO REASON Jr. Pac-Man shouldn’t be a celebrated game today. It’s so good!

If you think Ms. Pac-Man was a big leap over Pac-Man, you wouldn’t believe how big a leap Junior takes. At a whopping seven different mazes, this is the biggest Pac-Man game of the era, by far. Even Pac-Mania sticks to only four mazes. Of course, that’s not the biggest change. Jr. Pac-Man introduced scrolling to the series. This time around, the mazes are the length of two screens, so levels take much longer to finish. Much like Ms. Pac-Man, the mazes are brilliantly designed. Of course they are. Unlike the actual makers of Pac-Man, when it comes to understanding what made Pac-Man successful, developer General Computer f’n GOT IT! That’s why their two Pac-Man sequels, Ms. & Jr., were vastly superior to the first two horrible official sequels Namco put out: Super Pac-Man and Pac & Pal. Namco always fixated on the “eating” part of the Pac-Man formula, citing that as being appealing to women which is kind of cringe. I’m pretty sure all sexes.. you know.. eat. I’m not a doctor or a scientist but I’m almost certain eating isn’t specifically a woman thing. On the other hand, General Computer understood that the chase is the exciting part, the turning of the tables on the ghosts is the fun part, and eating is just the means to the end to deliver on those two elements in a fun and exciting way. Namco’s mazes for Pac & Pal and especially Super Pac-Man SUCKED. They weren’t exciting to be chased through. Consequently, they weren’t any fun.

NOM NOM NOM

Like Ms. Pac-Man before it, General Computer optimized Jr. Pac-Man’s mazes to maximize intense chases and nail-biting close calls while still giving players enough different routes to scratch-out distance between you and the ghosts. I’ll never understand why players of the era didn’t embrace Junior. I know arcade operators hated it. Games of Jr. Pac-Man tended to last longer, and longer games means less coin drops. But, I actually think these are the best Pac-Man mazes.. well.. ever! Now, granted, Jr. Pac-Man is missing the warp-tunnels that I usually rely on to shake the ghosts. However, like no other Pac-Man before it, this offers players flexibility to create their own strategies. My longtime readers will note that I put a high premium on that. The key is the addition of Mega Dots. Like Ms. Pac-Man, the bonus items hop around the maze. The twist is, this time around, the items convert standard dots into larger “Mega Dots” that score x5 the points, but at a cost: you pause for a fraction of a second while you eat them. Those fractions add-up and can be costly when there’s a ghost right behind you. It’s a gameplay mechanic that works flawlessly within the established formula, adding both flexibility for players and an even greater sense of tension to an already tense game.

You can see the difference in Mega Dots here. If you’re bold, you can use the strategy of letting the bonus items do their thing. Just, not TOO much, because.. well.. you’ll find out. Plus, you eventually do have to eat those Mega Dots, with all the drawback that comes with them. It adds a wonderful layer of risk/reward to a game already inherently caked in it.

There’s one other catch to the bonus item/Mega Dot mechanic: if the bonus item reaches one of the Power Pellets, they both blow up, and that power pellet is gone. If you’re chasing high scores, that means you lose the value of the item and as much as 3,000 points from eating the ghosts. Oh, and more importantly, you lose the potential to shake ghosts who are tailing you in that area. So, go ahead, let the bonus item hop around and make tons of Mega Dots. Just beware, because when you reach the sixth and seventh levels of the games, you’re going to need those power pellets. My biggest knock on Jr. Pac-Man.. my only knock, really.. is that, sometimes, it can take a long time to carve out a safe distance from the ghosts. Man, you really miss those warp tunnels when they’re gone. It wasn’t usual for me to need a minute or two to grab the final tiny cluster of dots just because I couldn’t shake my tails. Oh, it’s worth it. Hell, do it just to see the absolutely adorable cut scenes with Junior and Yum-Yum, daughter of Blinky (the red ghost). They have a crush on each-other. Awwww. Seriously, I want a game staring these two. They’re so cute together!

Junior and the Blinky’s daughter, Yum-Yum, are precious. This is the first time I actually enjoyed the cut-scenes in any classic Pac-Man, though I wish they’d stop looping after you’ve seen them. They even work the story into the game. The level after Junior gives Yum-Yum a balloon, the level’s item is a balloon! Actually, it is a bit messed up that the Pac-Family eat the ghosts, and then Blinky named his daughter Yum-Yum. It would be like living next to a family of cannibals and naming your children “Steak” and “Hamburger.”

The story of Junior’s development is every bit as fascinating as the game itself. Like, I thought the General Computer guys were geniuses for coming up with the mega dots. Guess what? They were already in the original Pac-Man game code. So are the Galaxian-like explosion graphics when one of the bonus items hits a power pellet. Yea, really. Apparently, GCC didn’t know exactly why they were there or what they were for. You can still give them credit for how they used them. The race-against-the-items or the mega dots slowing you down? You know.. the good stuff that makes Jr. Pac-Man so unique and exciting? That was all them. I wish they hadn’t gotten out of the game business. With the possible exception of the Pac-Man Championship Edition series (and Shigeru Miyamoto’s Pac-Man Vs.), there hasn’t been a truly great Pac-Man game in the years since. And, really, those Championship games aren’t truly maze-chases. They’re action games set in a maze. So, in this humble gamer’s opinion, the greatest makers of genuine Pac-Man games quit making games years ago. And that is a damn shame, folks.

General Computer, you sadistic bastards! This is the final maze of Jr. Pac-Man, and it’s a doozy. Look at that design of the corner. But, you know what? It works. It’s exciting, and fair. The means to shake the ghosts is right there.

A tiff seemed to have formed between GCC and Namco. AtGames is involved now too somehow and Namco has said “Ms. Pac-Man? The popular gaming mascot of the 80s and the rare example of a franchise that produced two instant global icons? Yea, never heard of her. It’s Pac-Mom in our games. M-O-M!” I don’t know if AtGames is tiffing with Namco or if the two sides simply can’t come to terms on allowing these games to release. I do know that Jr. Pac-Man deserves better than the non-legacy it has. I really do wish all parties could all come together and work this out. Not only are they leaving money on the table, but games like Ms. Pac-Man, Jr. Pac-Man, and yes, even Professor Pac-Man, deserve to be celebrated today. Jr. Pac-Man, especially. Everybody knows about the greatness of Ms. Pac-Man, but Junior came out right as the bottom was falling out in arcades. He didn’t get a kajillion ports before all the rights holders started getting snippy with each-other. It’s heartbreaking, because this is a really amazing game. Not just a great Pac-Man game, but maybe.. just maybe.. the BEST Pac-Man. The all-time classic that never was, and the perfect cap to what should be a celebrated TRILOGY of games. My Dad said it best: it would be like if you couldn’t include Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi with Star Wars anymore just because those films had different directors. Jr. Pac-Man is forty years old now. Can y’all bury the hatchet already? Not in each-other, I mean.

Jr. Pac-Man is Chick-Approved

Jr. Pac-Man was developed by General Computer Corporation