(5:00 in the morning, didn't go to bed. Pardon any incoherence.)
I believe a run for this game can be interesting and fun to watch. What seperates this Pac-Man game from the rest (that I've played) is:
- different ghost difficulties
- different level patterns
- pac boosters
The ghost difficulty basically is how quickly they move. I imagine an entertaining video will have really fast ghosts on the Crazy setting.
The different level patterns include mini, big, strange, and arcade. Mini is quite small. Big is quite large. Strange is... strange; it is sometimes asymmetrical. Arcade is retro.
Pac boosters are merely an option that allows you to go faster. You can select that it's always on, or if you want to toggle it.
A speed run of this game would be two-players on mini, starting on level 7. I think this would be boring. What would be fun, is getting the highest score possible. This means starting on level 1, eating all four ghosts for every power pellet you eat, and getting every fruit in the level. (And dying intentionally to get some fruit over and over again.) I haven't looked into it yet, but to get the high score you'd either play on Strange or on Big. Big has more pellets, but Strange has some weird fruit that give big points.
In the time waiting for new fruit to appear, the daring Ms. Pac-Man can dazzle us with her near-death encounters with the ghosts. Imagine following one, or sneaking in between two, with only a pixel to spare.
Playing this game in real life, I've never gotten over 200,000 points. I was thinking about how this variable was saved. 200,000 is greater than an unsigned integer, but 20,000 isn't. Perhaps they just used an unsigned integer and printed out an extra zero, (since you can't change the one's place in the game anyway.) If this is the case, then the points counter would reset at around 650,000. (If that score is even achievable, I haven't calculated it.)
Anyway, there's my thoughts for this game. I really think it'd be a fun game to watch. I'll do the math later and find out the best way to play to get the highest score. Would anyone be interested in making this run?
Thread I made regarding the NES version, which is basically the exact same game.
Interesting observation regarding the score looping, though. If whoever ends up running this gets the 10000-point flowers every time, we might just see the results of that theory...
Cool thread 4matsy. I did a forums search to see if anyone had posted something similiar, but no meaningful results showed up.
I thought two fruits appear in the level. I don't know about the randomness. Would you think that beating Strange or Big would give the highest score? How did you know you get a 1-up at 300k?
A couple things I forgot to mention in my original post. There are only 32 levels, so the game doesn't go on for too long, and there are no adequate FAQs at GameFaqs for this game.
Would you think that beating Strange or Big would give the highest score?
Probably Strange, since it has the 10000-point flowers, which should be luck-manipulatable; the other three sets only have the 5000-point bananas as the max fruit. Plus, Strange features a couple mazes from Mini and Big anyway, if my memory serves...
Ramzi wrote:
How did you know you get a 1-up at 300k?
Two ways...
One:
I actually own the Genesis version, and the instruction manual says so. =P
Two:
I once used a Game Genie "ghosts always stay blue" code to simulate a perfect Strange game (though I couldn't de-randomize the fruits to get flowers every time, since I was doing this on the actual console), and wound up with a score over 500,000. Which is why I said getting flowers every time might indeed cause the score counter to loop...
EDIT: Well...after some testing and messing around with the RAM to make all the fruits worth 200k (lol), it seems that the score doesn't loop until a million, and isn't reprinted correctly until the next level...seems they stored it as 6 individual digits, knowing full well no one would get that far. =P
Strange. Since the pellets are worth 10 (right?) it seems silly to even have the one's place. So it goes to 999,999 before looping? Would it be possible to get that score? I mean, say you get 2 10,000 flowers a level, which is 20,000. 200+400+800+1600=3000, times 4 is 12,000. 12k + 20k = 32k. 32k * 32 levels = 1024k = 1,024,000. Add the pellets. I don't know how much they're worth.
Also you can die 4 (or 5?) times getting the flowers twice each time again, getting about another 80-100k.
But it would be unrealistic to think you can get the flower all levels. Aren't level 1-7 definitely set with the fruit?
I'd like to see if cracking 1mil is possible.
there are no adequate FAQs at GameFaqs for this game.
Are you sure? I found [url=http://db.gamefaqs.com/coinop/arcade/file/ms_pac_man_a.txt[/url]this FAQ[/url] to be very informative and in-depth about ghost AI, board patterns, and other miscellaneous things.
Although that FAQ is for the Arcade version, surely some things in there apply to this version.
Perhaps somethings apply. But the versions 4matsy and I are talking about have only 32 levels, pac boosters, and different stage types. I think the arcade version is essentially pac-man with a bow. Maybe the values of the fruit and pellets, and the ghost behavior is the same; however, the FAQs are not for the game 4matsy and I are talking about.
Making this video is impossible. The eyeballs just keep going in circles. 4matsy, I made it up to level 7 getting all the ghosts and fruit. If you want to work with me on this I'll send you my file. I'm thinking about just beating the game, because getting all the ghosts is too hard.
