Pac-Man, has got to be the most definitive arcade game ever. It's more iconic and famous then space invaders or any shoot 'em ups. But what makes pac-man so special is that it represents everything that is good about computer games.
It's so simple to play, yet almost impossible to master. After all, you simply have to 'eat' all the dots on the screen, keeping out of the way of the four 'ghosts'. How hard could it be? You believe each time you play, you'll master it, it just seems that easy, but frustratedly you realise how difficult it is.
Most people can't get beyond level 3 let alone reach the 256th level ...
(This is where a split screen occurs due to a bug, and thus can not be completed)
So here are some things you really should know before playing Pac-Man to help you get further then normal:
The Ghosts:
- Blinky: The Dangerous One. The only ghost to actually track you by your actual position, trying to get to where you are as quickly as possible. He's fast and will try to trap you with corner changes. When he's after you run quick and run twisty through lots of corners to shake (as with all others, cornering successive turn is most likely to lose the ghost). Blinky will get a burst of speed when only a few dots are left in the maze. It will try to line up with you vertically first, then horizontally. Blinky owns and patrols the top right hand corner of the maze.
- Pinky: The Predictable One. Once he's on your tail he won't let go. But he'll stay on your tail running after you, hardly trying any tricks. Pinkey will line up with you by always following the direction which you are moving in or facing. The bad news is that Pinky is mates with Blinky and together they will try to trap you. However the good news is if Pac-Man and Pinky are heading toward each other, and there is a hallway just before he hits you, Pinky will turn into the hallway first! This is explained by the fact that Pinky is hard coded into the program to follow the movement of your joystick. Pinky owns and patrols the top left of the maze.
- Clyde: The Shy One. Usually if you can stay out of the way of the top two (Blinkey and Pinkey) you can get away from Clyde and Inky by running through the maze. Clyde doesn't want to line up with you or actively chase you. He is coded so that if you are in far proximity of him he will use you as a tracking device, BUT as soon as he gets in your proximity his tracking device changes to 'get me outta here'. That's why he seems to run away from you just after chasing you He just wants to get into your general vicinity and then only eats you if you happen to run into him. Clyde owns and patrols the bottom left of the maze
- Inky: The Unpredictable One. Often when faced head to head he will turn and run away from you. Mostly he will only catch you if you happen to run into his pattern. This is due to Inky's most complicated code for tracking Pac-man. He takes into account both Pac-Man and Blinky's position and finds a middle ground. Thus when Blinky is far away from Pac-Man, Inky seems to act like Clyde and shy away, but when Blinky's close, suddenly Inky becomes very similar to Pinky and will often end up trapping you. Inky owns and patrols the bottom right of the maze.
The Levels:
Levels 17, 19 and 20 are the mazes where the power pills will not turn the monsters blue anymore. They are rewarded with a key, as all levels after and including level 13 are. From level 21 and onwards not only will the power pills not allow you to eat the ghosts, your Pac-Man also noticeably slows down. On a straight line he will be caught in pure speed.
The Bugs:
1. Ghost Bug
A curious bug can be triggered when Pac-Man eats a ghost just as it is leaving the monster pen (the orange ghost is the easist one to catch this way). This may take a few attempts as the timing is crucial—try to capture it just as the lower edge of the ghost is passing through the door on top of the pen—but when done correctly, the eyes will return directly to the pen and the regenerated ghost will immediately start moving straight up and through the walls of the maze! As the ghost nears the top of the screen, it wraps around reappearing at the bottom edge of the board and continues upwards ignoring the maze walls. The ghost eventually makes it back into the monster pen at which point it resumes normal behavior. If Pac-Man eats another energizer and manages to capture the ghost before this happens, however, the ghost's eyes will move around but slightly out-of-sync with the maze and have difficulty returning to the pen. Sometimes the eyes will eventually correct themselves and find their way back home (restoring the ghost back to normal) but sometimes they remain lost until the level is completed.
2. House Bug
The trick involves having to sacrifice a life in order to reset and enable the global dot counter, and then making sure Clyde exits the house before that counter is equal to 32. This is accomplished by avoiding eating dots and waiting for the timer limit to force Clyde out. Once Clyde is moving for the exit, start eating dots again until at least 32 dots have been consumed since the life was lost. Now head for an energizer and gobble up some ghosts. Blinky will leave the house immediately as usual, but the other three ghosts will remain “stuck” inside as long as Pac-Man continues eating dots with sufficient frequency as not to trigger the control timer. Why does this happen? The key lies in how the global dot counter works—it cannot be deactivated if Clyde is outside the house when the counter has a value of 32. By letting the timer force Clyde out before 32 dots are eaten, the global dot counter will keep counting dots instead of deactivating when it reaches 32. Now when the ghosts are eaten by Pac-Man and return home, they will still be using the global dot counter to determine when to leave. As previously described, however, this counter's logic only checks for three values: 7, 17, and 32, and once those numbers are exceeded, the counter has no way to release the ghosts associated with them. The only control left to release the ghosts is the timer which can be easily avoided by eating a dot every so often to reset it.
3. Passing Through Bug
It wasn't too long after the release of Pac-Man when word began to spread of players occasionally passing straight through a ghost unharmed, seemingly at random. This rumor turned out to be completely true as most die-hard Pac-Man players can attest. If you play the game long enough, you will eventually see Pac-Man run into one of the ghosts and come out unscathed on the other side—it doesn't happen very often so enjoy it when it does! Some players have even gone so far as to incorporate this mysterious pass-through oddity into their patterns.
The root cause of this elusive peculiarity lies in the way the game detects collisions between Pac-Man and the four ghosts. Any time Pac-Man occupies the same tile as a ghost, he is considered to have collided with that ghost and a life is lost. It is irrelevant whether the ghost moved into Pac-Man's tile or Pac-Man into the ghost's—the result is the same either way. This logic proves sufficient for handling collisions more than 99% of the time during gameplay, but does not account for one very special case:
The above picture illustrates the conditions necessary to produce this curious behaviour. There are five consecutive frames showing Blinky and Pac-Man passing through each other. Below each frame is the same scene represented by the tiles they currently occupy and the per-pixel location of their center points. Pac-Man and Blinky are at just the right position and speed relative to one another to cause them to swap tiles with each other simultaneously. In other words, Pac-Man's center point moves upwards into Blinky's tile in the same 1/60th of a second that Blinky's center point moves downwards into Pac-Man's tile, resulting in them moving past each other without colliding. Note that Pac-Man's origin point is centered on the top edge of his tile in frame four; this is still considered to be inside the bottom tile, but moving up one more pixel will push him over the edge into the next one. Pac-Man and Blinky have now swapped tiles with each other in frame five, and Pac-Man can go on his merry way because he never “collided” (i.e., shared the same tile) with Blinky at all! See Below:
One last trick: There is a safe spot on the maze that hides Pacman from the ghosts - they are unable to get him. This is found on the right side of the T-section beneath the ghost pen however there are two conditions that must be met in order for Pacman to stay invisible.
The first is that none of the ghosts must "see" Pacman enter the safe spot - if they do they can follow him in and eat him! The other condition is that you must approach the spot from the south (just to the right of where Pacman begins each round). If you meet both conditions you can leave Pacman in that location for as long as you like and move the joystick when you are ready to resume playing the Pacman game.
They're the basics, but for much more in depth information I recommend checking out both jpittman's guide and mameworld's guide where I got most of the information from.
Right lets beat that level 21...WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA...
Level | Bonus Symbol | Bonus Points | Pac-Man Speed | Pac-Man Dots Speed | Ghost Speed | Ghost Tunnel Speed | Elroy 1 Dots Left | Elroy 1 Speed | Elroy 2 Dots Left | Elroy 2 Speed | Fright. Pac-Man Speed | Fright Pac-Man Dots Speed | Fright Ghost Speed | Fright. Time (in sec.) | # of Flashes |
1 | Cherries | 100 | 80% | ~71% | 75% | 40% | 20 | 80% | 10 | 85% | 90% | ~79% | 50% | 6 | 5 |
2 | Strawberry | 300 | 90% | ~79% | 85% | 45% | 30 | 90% | 15 | 95% | 95% | ~83% | 55% | 5 | 5 |
3 | Peach | 500 | 90% | ~79% | 85% | 45% | 40 | 90% | 20 | 95% | 95% | ~83% | 55% | 4 | 5 |
4 | Peach | 500 | 90% | ~79% | 85% | 45% | 40 | 90% | 20 | 95% | 95% | ~83% | 55% | 3 | 5 |
5 | Apple | 700 | 100% | ~87% | 95% | 50% | 40 | 100% | 20 | 105% | 100% | ~87% | 60% | 2 | 5 |
6 | Apple | 700 | 100% | ~87% | 95% | 50% | 50 | 100% | 25 | 105% | 100% | ~87% | 60% | 5 | 5 |
7 | Grapes | 1000 | 100% | ~87% | 95% | 50% | 50 | 100% | 25 | 105% | 100% | ~87% | 60% | 2 | 5 |
8 | Grapes | 1000 | 100% | ~87% | 95% | 50% | 50 | 100% | 25 | 105% | 100% | ~87% | 60% | 2 | 5 |
9 | Galaxian | 2000 | 100% | ~87% | 95% | 50% | 60 | 100% | 30 | 105% | 100% | ~87% | 60% | 1 | 3 |
10 | Galaxian | 2000 | 100% | ~87% | 95% | 50% | 60 | 100% | 30 | 105% | 100% | ~87% | 60% | 5 | 5 |
11 | Bell | 3000 | 100% | ~87% | 95% | 50% | 60 | 100% | 30 | 105% | 100% | ~87% | 60% | 2 | 5 |
12 | Bell | 3000 | 100% | ~87% | 95% | 50% | 80 | 100% | 40 | 105% | 100% | ~87% | 60% | 1 | 3 |
13 | Key | 5000 | 100% | ~87% | 95% | 50% | 80 | 100% | 40 | 105% | 100% | ~87% | 60% | 1 | 3 |
14 | Key | 5000 | 100% | ~87% | 95% | 50% | 80 | 100% | 40 | 105% | 100% | ~87% | 60% | 3 | 5 |
15 | Key | 5000 | 100% | ~87% | 95% | 50% | 100 | 100% | 50 | 105% | 100% | ~87% | 60% | 1 | 3 |
16 | Key | 5000 | 100% | ~87% | 95% | 50% | 100 | 100% | 50 | 105% | 100% | ~87% | 60% | 1 | 3 |
17 | Key | 5000 | 100% | ~87% | 95% | 50% | 100 | 100% | 50 | 105% | – | – | – | – | – |
18 | Key | 5000 | 100% | ~87% | 95% | 50% | 100 | 100% | 50 | 105% | 100% | ~87% | 60% | 1 | 3 |
19 | Key | 5000 | 100% | ~87% | 95% | 50% | 120 | 100% | 60 | 105% | – | – | – | – | – |
20 | Key | 5000 | 100% | ~87% | 95% | 50% | 120 | 100% | 60 | 105% | – | – | – | – | – |
21+ | Key | 5000 | 90% | ~79% | 95% | 50% | 120 | 100% | 60 | 105% | – | – | – | – | – |
The Bugs:
1. Ghost Bug
A curious bug can be triggered when Pac-Man eats a ghost just as it is leaving the monster pen (the orange ghost is the easist one to catch this way). This may take a few attempts as the timing is crucial—try to capture it just as the lower edge of the ghost is passing through the door on top of the pen—but when done correctly, the eyes will return directly to the pen and the regenerated ghost will immediately start moving straight up and through the walls of the maze! As the ghost nears the top of the screen, it wraps around reappearing at the bottom edge of the board and continues upwards ignoring the maze walls. The ghost eventually makes it back into the monster pen at which point it resumes normal behavior. If Pac-Man eats another energizer and manages to capture the ghost before this happens, however, the ghost's eyes will move around but slightly out-of-sync with the maze and have difficulty returning to the pen. Sometimes the eyes will eventually correct themselves and find their way back home (restoring the ghost back to normal) but sometimes they remain lost until the level is completed.
2. House Bug
The trick involves having to sacrifice a life in order to reset and enable the global dot counter, and then making sure Clyde exits the house before that counter is equal to 32. This is accomplished by avoiding eating dots and waiting for the timer limit to force Clyde out. Once Clyde is moving for the exit, start eating dots again until at least 32 dots have been consumed since the life was lost. Now head for an energizer and gobble up some ghosts. Blinky will leave the house immediately as usual, but the other three ghosts will remain “stuck” inside as long as Pac-Man continues eating dots with sufficient frequency as not to trigger the control timer. Why does this happen? The key lies in how the global dot counter works—it cannot be deactivated if Clyde is outside the house when the counter has a value of 32. By letting the timer force Clyde out before 32 dots are eaten, the global dot counter will keep counting dots instead of deactivating when it reaches 32. Now when the ghosts are eaten by Pac-Man and return home, they will still be using the global dot counter to determine when to leave. As previously described, however, this counter's logic only checks for three values: 7, 17, and 32, and once those numbers are exceeded, the counter has no way to release the ghosts associated with them. The only control left to release the ghosts is the timer which can be easily avoided by eating a dot every so often to reset it.
3. Passing Through Bug
It wasn't too long after the release of Pac-Man when word began to spread of players occasionally passing straight through a ghost unharmed, seemingly at random. This rumor turned out to be completely true as most die-hard Pac-Man players can attest. If you play the game long enough, you will eventually see Pac-Man run into one of the ghosts and come out unscathed on the other side—it doesn't happen very often so enjoy it when it does! Some players have even gone so far as to incorporate this mysterious pass-through oddity into their patterns.
The root cause of this elusive peculiarity lies in the way the game detects collisions between Pac-Man and the four ghosts. Any time Pac-Man occupies the same tile as a ghost, he is considered to have collided with that ghost and a life is lost. It is irrelevant whether the ghost moved into Pac-Man's tile or Pac-Man into the ghost's—the result is the same either way. This logic proves sufficient for handling collisions more than 99% of the time during gameplay, but does not account for one very special case:
The above picture illustrates the conditions necessary to produce this curious behaviour. There are five consecutive frames showing Blinky and Pac-Man passing through each other. Below each frame is the same scene represented by the tiles they currently occupy and the per-pixel location of their center points. Pac-Man and Blinky are at just the right position and speed relative to one another to cause them to swap tiles with each other simultaneously. In other words, Pac-Man's center point moves upwards into Blinky's tile in the same 1/60th of a second that Blinky's center point moves downwards into Pac-Man's tile, resulting in them moving past each other without colliding. Note that Pac-Man's origin point is centered on the top edge of his tile in frame four; this is still considered to be inside the bottom tile, but moving up one more pixel will push him over the edge into the next one. Pac-Man and Blinky have now swapped tiles with each other in frame five, and Pac-Man can go on his merry way because he never “collided” (i.e., shared the same tile) with Blinky at all! See Below:
One last trick: There is a safe spot on the maze that hides Pacman from the ghosts - they are unable to get him. This is found on the right side of the T-section beneath the ghost pen however there are two conditions that must be met in order for Pacman to stay invisible.
The first is that none of the ghosts must "see" Pacman enter the safe spot - if they do they can follow him in and eat him! The other condition is that you must approach the spot from the south (just to the right of where Pacman begins each round). If you meet both conditions you can leave Pacman in that location for as long as you like and move the joystick when you are ready to resume playing the Pacman game.
They're the basics, but for much more in depth information I recommend checking out both jpittman's guide and mameworld's guide where I got most of the information from.
Right lets beat that level 21...WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA...
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