It’s All in the Family

When it came to Pac-Man, Bally Midway had a good thing going. They had the license and distribution rights to the original game, and because of the way the contract was set up it somehow also allowed the company to develop sequels to the original outside the direct control of Namco, who made the original game in Japan. This meant that Bally Midway could make their own, original games in the series even as Namco was taking their version of the series in a completely different direction. Bally Midway picked up that (yellow) ball and ran with it.

In the span of just three years, the company flooded the zone. They put out Ms. Pac-Man, the first classic sequel that everyone to this day loves, Pac-Man Plus, Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man and Baby Pac-Man pinball titles, and then Professor Pac-Man in bars and taverns. And then when many of those experiments failed to live up to expectations, they went back to the drawing board with developer General Computer Corp. (who made the conversion kit that became Ms. Pac-Man) and decided on a more back-to-basics approach.

From that collaboration came Jr. Pac-Man, a game that can both be seen as a throwback to the original titles as well as an evolution of the core form. It’s a game that realizes what people liked about the maze-chase action of Pac-Man was the maze-chase action. They didn’t necessarily need pinball mechanics (although Baby Pac-Man is legitimately good), and they didn’t care much about the character outside his original setting and adventure (something Namco would struggle with as well). They wanted their yellow pellet-chomper in a maze, getting chased by ghosts. Tap into that and you have yourself a winner.

Jr. Pac-Man doesn’t stray too far from the concept, although it does throw in some remixed ideas. The core gameplay returns with the newly born Junior put into a maze where he has to eat all the pellets. Naturally, as per the conventions of this game series, four ghosts (Blink, Pinky, Inky, and Tim) chase Junior around the maze. If they touch him, the little tyke dies, and if he loses all his lives then the game is over. Of course, there are power pellets in the maze that Junior can eat, which will turn the ghosts vulnerable and very edible for the tyke, but only for a short period of time.

This is all pretty standard stuff for a Pac-Man game (trivia and pinball titles notwithstanding). But GCC and Bally Midway threw in a couple of curveballs that really changed up the experience. The first is that the mazes are now much larger, double the size of the original mazes in the first game. The mazes are so large they no longer fit on the screen, so they have to be scrolled. What this means is that there are times where you won’t be able to see all the ghosts at once, and it can make planning your routes and figuring out the best lines that much harder. To help balance this most mazes have more power pellets than in the original game (up to six from the original four), but counteracting this one concession, the access tunnels that looped across stages were removed (likely because they would have made the game far too easy).

The collectible items (which are kids’ toys in this game) also serve a secondary function. If one of the toys (which bounce along the stages like in Ms. Pac-Man) comes into contact with a normal pellet, it’ll change it into a slightly fatter one. The pellets are harder for Junior to eat, slowing him down and making him easier prey for the ghosts. Additionally, if the bouncing toy comes into contact with a power pellet, it’ll explode, taking out the pellet with it. Players have to be mindful of the toys, then, and try to collect them wherever possible so the bonus items don’t do too much damage.

These changes to the formula are interesting. They show that GCC and Bally Midway were really trying to find ways to expand and improve the Pac-Man formula without drastically changing things too far. Unlike Pac-Man Plus, which added far too much variability to the format, Jr. Pac Man hews much closer to the formula, making for a more predictable and expected take on the form. The larger, more complex mazes are a change that doesn’t feel drastic while still showing some room to grow for the concept all the same.

With that said, the larger mazes are also harder to navigate, and with the ghosts frequently being off screen, popping in when you least expect them, it can make form a far more difficult play experience. Clearly the developers wanted to make sure that even with larger stages, players would find it difficult to get past that three minute-per-quarter barrier that arcade games were supposed to have. In fact, even clearly the first maze can prove difficult just due to sheer size and complexity. This was a game for true Pac-Man masters.

That likely is a big reason why this game didn’t catch on as well in 1983 as its predecessor, Ms. Pac-Man did in 1982. Although there was also the fact that by the time Jr. Pac-Man came along, the market had been well and truly flooded with over eight different titles bearing the Pac-Man name in arcades. One more game in the series, no matter how good or interesting, was fighting an uphill battle getting the attention of consumers. “Oh, it’s yet another Pac-Man, just like all the others.” Clearly that wasn’t entirely true… but it wasn’t that far off either.

Still, the game did just well enough to warrant a port, showing up on the Atari 2600 (eventually, in 1986). This is probably the best port of a Pac-Man game the 2600 saw, with the Atari version requiring only one minor concession to make it work as well as the arcade version. Because the arcade game used a rotated monitor (like most arcade games of the era did), the layout for the game had to be changed when it moved to the home console. Where the arcade game scrolled horizontally, the Atari 2600 version scrolled vertically. But otherwise this was a solid and faithful port that only looked slightly worse for the wear being on the aging 2600. Not a bad deal, all things considered.

Jr. Pac-Man isn’t an easy game but it is pretty fun. The game best illustrates, though, that there was only so much life you could ring out of the Pac-Man formula. Both Bally Midway and Namco tried, to great and lesser success, and the results inevitably saw diminishing returns. Jr. Pac-Man was a fine game that probably would be beloved today if it was simply the third game in the series instead of the eighth. People caught Pac-Man Fever… and then very quickly lost it when the market got oversaturated, and Jr. Pac-Man paid the price. It was the last true, classic game in the series to come out in the 1980s, with Namco pushing the series much further out of its comfort zone, in differing ways, with its follow-up titles.