Personal Compuer Games
1st May 1984
Pac-Man
I must admit that my first impression on seeing this game was 'why did they bother?' After all, the Spectrum has been around for a couple of years now and, despite the efforts of Atari's litigation-hungry legal department, a number of companies have produced Pac-Man-derived games.
Indeed. Bug-Byte's excellent Spectres was a novel implementation that sold very well and proved extremely addictive to play.
But it must be said that the official, Atari-approved Pac-Man has a number of things going for it.
The aim, of course, is to tear round a maze, gobbling dots and avoiding monsters. I found that keyboard control was adequate, but a joystick is a necessity for those really high scores.Atarisoft has chosen to ignore the Sinclair Interface 2 and instead has opted for Kempston compatibility, which could cut the sales potential a bit, although it must be said that probably the majority of Spectrum owners have plumped for this particular stick.
Although the four ghosts don't have the 'personalities' of their arcade counterparts, once the first couple of mazes have been cleared the action gets fast and furious enough for anyone.
The graphics are faithful to the original, given the Spectrum's limitations, and all in all this is a fair copy of the arcade favourite. But have they left it too late? And look at the price! Atarisoft is pushing its luck a bit. I can't see too many Spectrum owners being willing to shell out more than a fiver!
