Jr. Pac-Man

The Good
After the success of Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, Bally/Midway decided to create yet another unauthorized game based on the Pac-Man Series. This time, the company introduced another character called Jr. Pac-Man, which is basically a small Pac-Man with an eye and a propeller beanie.

Aptly named Jr. Pac-Man, the object is to guide Junior around a huge maze, gobbling up all the dots and avoiding the four ghosts in order to go to the next maze. Prizes wander around every now and then, and when they touch a dot, the dots turn into larger ones. Larger dots have their advantages and disadvantages. Although they are worth 50 points each, getting these slow Junior down. If he does not get the prize, then it will explode.

Jr. Pac is a much harder game than any of its predecessors, in that each ghost can easily catch you (they travel around a lot faster) and it is likely that you can die unless you can eat a power pill quickly and turn the tables on them. When one or more ghosts are chasing you, and you already are traveling in another direction to get away from them, then the remaining ghosts are more likely to block your path and intercept you, and since you are trapped, you have no choice but lose one of your lives. This game is hard that I actually lost all my lives just trying to get away from the ghosts for once.

The game is much similar to the coin-op version. The characters, including Junior and the ghosts, look exactly the same as they should, only much bigger. There are new sound effects that are the same as the original, including new start-up music and the new “death” sound. When you get a power pellet, the sound effect that is heard while the ghosts are blue sounds cool. All the text in a lower-case, yellow kiddy font to indicate that the character that you are controlling is a young one. The new intermissions are more enjoyable than the ones in Ms. Pac-Man

One difference is that the mazes in the C64 version all fit on a single screen, not on more than one screen, so you don't have to scroll like its Atari 2600 and coin-op counterparts, but I'm not sure if this is a good thing or bad thing.

The Bad
Nothing.

The Bottom Line
The Commodore 64 version of Jr. Pac-Man remains faithful to the coin-op version. Same gameplay, same sound effects, same graphics. One difference between the two platforms is that the C64 version does not let you scroll screens, but this may be because that the original game had a vertical resolution, rather than a horizontal resolution, like its predecessors. Jr. Pac-Man is still enjoyable whether you like the changes to the gameplay or not.