So, what do you do if you have the license to distribute Pac-Man, one of the most popular games of all time, but don’t have a sequel to throw to the masses that are waiting anxiously for the Next Big Thing? You make and distribute a totally unauthorized sequel, of course!
Jr. Pac-Man stays pretty close to the formula laid down by its predecessor: ghost-shaped monsters chase your little pac-person through a maze, said pac-person must eat everything in the maze except the ghost-shaped monsters. Pretty standard stuff as far as the pac-universe goes. Though there are a couple of significant differences.
The maze is about 2 regular screens wide and will scroll back and forth to show you the action. The obvious problems with this setup include: you can’t keep an eye on all four of the ghosts if they are off the screen and it’s tough to find that one dot that you missed in order to clear the stage.
The other main problem is the bouncing fruits, though they aren’t so much ‘fruits’ as they are ‘tricycles’, ‘kites’, and the like. But they do two notable things: when they pass over a dot, they make it slightly larger, and when they collide with a power-pill they self-destruct, taking out the power-pill as well. Since the pills are your only line of defense (other than your lightening quick reflexes and exceptional cunning, of course), this makes things slightly more difficult, but the real kick in the pants is the slightly-larger regular dots. They net you slightly more points when you eat them, but slow you down slightly (since they’re so big, I suppose) as you’re chewing through them. Throw in a cluster of slightly embiggened dots, reduced power-pills, and some relentless ghosties that you may or may not be able to see, and you have a game that becomes frustrating very quickly. I managed to see the first act, two stages in, and that’s about when my stamina ran out. Permanently.