C64 Lady Pac Review | Ms. Pac-Man port
GAME DESCRIPTION:
On June 29th, 2021, Indieretronews.com posted an article covering the recent release of Lady Pac by Luca Carminati. The image posted resembled Ms. Pac-Man and I was intrigued. After visiting the download page on ITCH.io
https://lowcarb.itch.io/lady-pac
Downloading and starting up the game the following message displays.
This game is a (sic) homage to Ms. Pac-Man, an arcade game published by Midway in 1982. Main differences from the original version
– Randomly generated mazes
– Bonus rounds.
Use a joystick to move Lady Pac. At 10,000 and every 50,000 pts you earn an extra life (7 max). While playing, press F7 to pause or F1 to stop the game and go back to the title.
GAMEPLAY
Lady Pac is a loose port of the wildly popular arcade game, Ms. Pac Man with a few key differences. For those unfamiliar with Ms. Pac-Man, it was released back in 1982 by Midway and was the sequel to Pac-Man. The game was lauded for its many improvements over the original. It was hugely successful, selling more than 125,000 arcade units by 1988.
As mentioned Lady Pac is similar to Ms. Pac-man, only with randomly generated mazes and bonus rounds in place of intermissions, being the main differences. In Lady Pac, the goal is to complete the maze by eating all the dots and power-ups while avoiding the ghosts. Fruits may randomly appear on the maze and can be consumed for additional bonus points. The fruits are not stationary. They randomly move around the maze. This will happen two times per level. As you advance in levels, the fruit changes, and their point values increase. When you consume the power pellets, the ghosts will temporarily turn blue and can be consumed by Lady Pac. How long they remain blue may reduce as you progress through the levels.
After completing two mazes, Lady Pac gives you a break by letting you complete a 35-second bonus round, just fruit, no ghosts, an all-you-can-eat vegan delight. This occurs after the second round and then after every third proceeding round is completed.
Title screen
When the game first starts up we are presented with the intro message, which fades out revealing a quick logo screen. The logo drops in from above and below, converging at the center. It contains the programmer’s initials, “LC” with “games” displayed vertically and “presents” along the bottom. I think it looks pretty darn cool.
After that, we are presented with the main title screen showing the game’s title “Lady Pac” displayed across the top in a font that resembles the game’s maze. You can select between the following options, with a Lady Pac sprite selector; Play; Top Scores; Lives; ghosts; and Difficulty. @2021 Luca Carminati with the Lc Games image displayed at the bottom center.
Selecting “play” will start your game. Selecting “top scores” will display the top 10 scores. You can select the number of lives to begin the game with, either three, four or five.
The number of ghosts to play with can be adjusted from 4 to 5.
The difficulty choices are “Normal”, “Hard”, “Expert”, and “Easy”.
I asked Luca about the differences between difficulties and he pointed out the following, quoting Luca:
The speed of the ghosts gradually increases round after round; the time the ghosts chase Lady Pac is constant at 17 seconds, while the time they wander decreases round by round (this does not apply to the orange ghost that always moves randomly); the time in which the ghosts are edible also decreases round after round; the same goes for the length of the time the ghosts stay in the house. Depending on the difficulty level chosen (Easy, Normal, Hard, Expert), the speed of the ghosts and the aforementioned times go from a minimum value at the start of the game up to a maximum value within a few rounds. To give an example, the time in which the ghosts are edible gradually goes from 6 seconds to 3 seconds (over 7 rounds) if you choose the Easy difficulty, while it goes from 5 seconds to 1 second if you choose the Expert difficulty. When I talk about seconds, they are exact for NTSC machines while for PAL machines they expand by 20%.
When the game first starts, the familiar Ms. Pac-Man start-up tune plays. You will notice the maze looks completely different. That’s because in Lady Pac the mazes are completely randomly generated. Lady Pac includes two warp tunnels located at the top and bottom of each maze. This is another difference between the arcade Ms. Pac-Man which places them on the left and right-hand sides.
Controls
You play Lady Pac with a standard joystick in port 2, up, down left, and right. From the menus, the fire button on the joystick will make your selections. Pressing F7 will pause the game while pressing F1 will exit the game returning you back to the menu system. I found the controls to be responsive, working just as expected.
Scoring
Standard scoring applies. Dots are worth 10 points each, power pellets 50
200 points for consuming ghost one
400 for ghost two
800 for the third ghost
And if you consume all four ghosts, 1600 points are awarded.
🍒 Cherry: 100 points.
🍓 Strawberry: 200 points.
🍊 Orange: 500 points.
🥨 Pretzel: 700 points.
🍎 Apple: 1000 points.
🍐 Pear: 2000 points.
🍌 Banana: 5000 points.
In the bonus rounds, you are awarded 200 per fruit and 2000 points for completing the round.
Spare life
You are awarded a spare life at 10,000 points and every 50,000 points thereafter.
Strategy
I found since the speed of Lady Pac does not increase through the game and the ghosts only minimally, you have to rely on learning their patterns. The orange ghosts moves around completely randomly while the other ghosts will seek you out once in a while but not always. I’ve noticed they reverse direction quite frequently almost to the point of being predictable. Sometimes you can follow behind a ghost to help escape a sticky situation. Keep in mind there are two warp tunnels per maze, which come in handy trying to get away.
Graphics
The graphics in Lady Pac are excellent! Exactly what I would have expected from an arcade port of Ms. Pac-Man. The maze details and colors are spot on. They change colors between levels and have white highlights. The fruit is easily identifiable and sort of dances around the maze. Lady Pac is properly animated, has a bow and her lipstick is visible. The ghost’s eyes face the direction they travel in. When you complete a level, the maze flashes as expected. It looks and feels amazingly like Ms. Pac-Man.
Sound
One of the best parts of this port are the sound effects. The sounds present are arcade accurate. The background siren is present, there is a sound effect for eating the dots, power pellets, and ghosts. There is a sound effect for losing a life, and the dancing fruit has it’s own sound effect. There are a couple of sound effects that are missing. There’s no sound effect the ghost eyes returning back to their cage. There is also not a sound effect when you are awarded a spare life.
The ones present are arcade accurate and for me are one of the best attributes of the game.
Difficulty switches / Level ramp-ups
I’ve noticed in Lady Pac, the speed of the game does not ramp up between levels. Lady Pac herself remains the same steady speed throughout. However, the ghosts do slightly increase their speed as levels are completed, just not by much. Perhaps not enough.
Luca mentioned there are four ways Lady Pac adjusts the gameplay difficulty ramp-ups:
• the speed of the ghosts;
• the length of the time the ghosts wander randomly rather than chasing Lady Pac (these 2 phases alternate continuously);
• the length of the time the ghosts are edible after swallowing a Power Pellet;
• the stay of the ghosts in the house at the beginning of each round
Easter eggs
There are no easter eggs in Lady Pac.
Suggestions for Improvements
I really like what Luca has done with Lady Pac. It doesn’t even bother me how the mazes are procedurally generated or the fact the intermissions have been removed. I do miss the speed ramp-ups though between the levels. Without them, it takes it down a notch, making it just a tad less interesting when you complete a level.
I asked Luca why the speed of Lady Pac does not ramp up between levels and was thankful for his response:
In order to maintain better maneuverability of the character (high speeds lead to more frequent maneuvering errors).
Other than that, I was really impressed with the sound effects which I feel were nailed. I would have liked for there to have been separate leaderboards for the different difficulties in the game. Heck, if the Atari 2600 homebrews do it and do it well, there is no reason why it couldn’t be done here. Also, it’s also not clear how to reset the high scores. On the bonus rounds, I am not sure why he didn’t just award the points based on the fruit consumed rather than just 200 per fruit. I think it would have made it more rewarding for getting deeper in the game.
I read some comments from some people missing the attract screen. Let me explain. Arcade-style games were initially designed to be quarter munchers, 25 cents per play. For that reason, they are often quite difficult. When the game is over, they would initiate what are commonly known as attract screens to get people’s attention. Sort of like advertising to get people to play. Although nowadays especially, we don’t necessarily pay to play anymore which makes them mostly unnecessary. It lends to the overall polished feel of the game when present. Without it for example until I play, I have no idea how the scoring works or how much each consumed ghost or fruit is worth.
Ports
Lady Pac was created for use on the Commodore 64. It supports both PAL and NTSC modes. It is itself a port of Ms. Pac-Man.
Media Coverage
As I mentioned, I first heard about the game over on the Indieretronews.com website. It has made the rounds on the Commodore 64 forums and some people have even begun posting gameplay videos. Again you can pick up the game for free over with donate option over on:
https://lowcarb.itch.io/lady-pac
Conclusion
Lady Pac is a solid port of Ms. Pac-Man for the Commodore 64. This is the port that nobody knew they needed but are glad that it is finally here. It’s been a fun experience playing Lady Pac and trying to beat my own high scores. It again brings back that nostalgic feeling of playing Ms. Pac-Man in the arcade. This is not the first port Luca has worked on. He has several other arcade ports with the Luca twists, available to download over on his itch.io page under the name lowcarb.
Highly Recommended
