Ms. Pac-Man is a great game to port to the Game Boy. The graphics and gameplay are solid. It is an excellent port that emulates the arcade experience quite well.
This is a well-made port of Ms. Pac-Man. Well, it isn’t as good as the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive port; it is a very good one.
TLDR: A solid port of a classic arcade game.
Gameplay
If you have played the arcade game or one of the other ports of Pac-Man, then you’ll know exactly what to do. This is a single-screen maze chase game. It ramps up in difficulty as you progress through the game.
It does take a few understandable liberties with the arcade game. Scrolling was added to keep the visuals intact. It is pretty great and doesn’t impact the gameplay.
Everything from the game is in here. You have the power pellets and the four ghosts. It is a faithful recreation of the arcade game.
There are three game modes—Single-player, two-player, and arcade mode, which is the hard mode. I didn’t try to play the arcade mode (because I’m a filthy casual!), and I didn’t have an extra Game Boy and cartridge to try the two-player mode.
Visuals
The game looks good. This is a black-and-white game, so it doesn’t look as good as the other game’s ports. It looks much better than the Coleco LCD and other games.
The lack of color graphics does take away something special from Pac-Man. Having the ghosts in black-and-white makes it harder to visually identify their pattern. I couldn’t tell exactly if the AI was brought to this port. It was a little frustrating.
The sprites are big enough on the Game Boy’s screen. If scrolling hadn’t been used in this game, it would have made it too small to see what was going on. Thankfully, this wasn’t an issue.
The scrolling screen works great. I never felt like it created cheap deaths and was limited to vertical scrolling. I can’t think of many ways to do this on the Game Boy; it works great.
Replayability
Like many other arcade games from the 80s, Ms. Pac-Man can be played endlessly. The only goal is to reach a high score. This gives the game a lot of replay value, especially if you’re competing against a friend.
Having simple controls and great gameplay helps this game be something you can always return to. This is a case where not having a story to the game is helpful. As a handheld game, you don’t need to have something with a deep story.
9/10. This port of Ms. Pac-man is a good one. This is a faithful port of a classic arcade game and works well as a Game Boy game.
Pros
- Pick up and play game
- Great gameplay
- Good graphics
Cons
- No story, if that matters to you
- Two-player mode is restrictive
Conclusion
Arcade ports work well as handhelds. You don’t need to worry about keeping up with a story to play the game. This is something that can be played in short spurts when you have time.
This isn’t my preferred version of Ms. Pac-man. I would rather like play the arcade version or the NES port. Overall, this is a good version of the game, and if you have a Game Boy or want to emulate the game, it is worth it.