Just as good as the original...maybe better
The original Pac-Man was a worldwide smash success, so much so that it reportedly caused a temporary coin shortage in Japan as most of them sat inside Pac-Man cabinets instead of peoples’ pockets. Naturally this level of success made American distributor Midway eager to get out the next Pac-Man game to keep the money rolling in. While waiting for original developer Namco to deliver they filled the gap by doing sprite swaps on an unpublished game called Crazy Otto and created Ms. Pac-Man. It would go on to great success of its own.
Ms. Pac-Man plays pretty much just like its predecessor. She navigates a maze eating pellets and bonus items while avoiding four angry ghosts. The wraparound paths that take you from one side of the screen to the other are still here and so are the power pellets for when you want to spend time as the pursuer instead of pursuee. Ghost AI has also been changed so that it is harder for the best players to exploit common patterns to get to that perfect score. Cutscenes are also back between some stages and this time they detail the romance of Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, concluding with the arrival of a baby Pac.
TV, movies, and the rest of popular culture love to reference Ms. Pac-Man as much as the original and will sometimes focus on the romance of the two title characters themselves rather the more common tactic of bringing up the gameplay. Ms. Pac-Man holds further significance as being one of the first major female heroes in gaming. Anyone who enjoyed the original Pac-Man will get just as much enjoyment out of this sequel, if not more with the changed up ghost AI. It is required playing for classic arcade enthusiasts and anyone wanting to get into that aspect of gaming culture.