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Pac-Man Turns 25
blacklily8 writes "CNN Money is running a story about Pac-Man's 25th birthday. After going on a bit about the history of our favorite pizza sans one slice, the article waxes a bit on why the game was (and is) such a success, with some quotations from Namco's marketing manager: 'He's very colorful, very safe. It's definitely different than the trends going on in games. He just has an appeal.' I think it's because the game is just plain fun, with no need to rely on tech-demo thrills to attract attention. Time to dig out the X-Arcade." It's also *hard*, proving that challenging games are what people have always been looking for.
eerro eerro wa wa wa
Let's not forget today's GUComics, who also noticed that Pacman turned 25 :-)
It's also *hard*, proving that challenging games are what people have always been looking for. There's also a Pac-Man, proving that games with a Pac-Man are what people have always been looking for.
Is this going to be the first of an accelerating deluge of articles as an increasing number of items from the explosive growth in early days of computing turn a quarter century?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
And to think, his original name was PuckMan.
Ask Slashdot: Where bad ideas meet poor googling skills.
You'll understand how depressed he is lately. Poor guy :/
+5 Informative!
You only posted this story to make use of the pacman icon.
...than to have him as the icon for the "Classic Games" category.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
And best of all, Pac-Pix on the Nintendo DS is IMHO one of the most original and fun games I've played in a long time and is a very suitable tribute to the anniversary. It's good to see a 25 year old franchise can still innovate!
Pac-man is well settled in life.. in times of xbox and PS2, many (including me) still like to play this.. its time for him to get married now..
I believe the orignal poster's comment ("It's also *hard*, proving that challenging games are what people have always been looking for). Now that I've played legendary Halo, the only reason I ever go back to Heroic, Normal, or Easy is to see how fast I can do it. A lot of people just love a challenge.
http://nerdfortress.com/
I dunno about that. Playing PacMan always made me feel like reaching for some crackers to go with the cheese.
So, was I the only one to find Ms PacMan, what with saucy bow and full red lips, sexy?
Really? Me neither.
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."
Clikey...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
For he inspired the game "Happy Weed."
and still one of the most addicting, followed closely by Super Mario Bros.
I am thankful that the article did not mention the atrocity that was the 2600 port, the brutal Saturday morning cartoon, or Pac-Man's bland sequel, Pac-Man Jr.
Cashing in on the craze nearly ruined the franchise then (its partially responsible for ruining Atari and top 40 radio as we know it), but it gave me endless arcade fun back in "the day".
...both interiorlly, and exteriorlly.
I think it's because the game is just plain fun, with no need to rely on tech-demo thrills to attract attention.
Twenty-five years ago, Pac-man was a tech-demo thrill. Compare it to Space Invaders, the previous blockbuster game, and it's a night and day difference in graphics, sound, and presentation.
But apart from that, I think one of the things that really made pac-man was being the first truly funny game to come along. And to invest each of the ghosts with a personality, and even make them chase differently, that's just genius.
And don't get me started on having the intermission shows, the fantastic sound effects, and the fruit prize intended to lure greedy gamers to their doom. It wasn't until the mid-80s, with Zaxxon, Pole Position, and especially Marble Madness, that Pac-Man lost its luster for me.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
"It's also *hard*, proving that challenging games are what people have always been looking for."
Yes. One game out of thousands proves your point.
No.
It's where you move a really skinny Ms Pacman around and force her to eat the dots.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Pacman was my final project for my c++ class in school. And given how anal these types of classes are, I had something like:
Object
|-> MovableObject
|-> Enemy
|-> Ghost
|-> AttackingGhost
AHHH!!
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
They were the first to get a colorful game in the living room. Before that it was PONG -or- nuthin'. Nuthin' like being first.
God: When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
of legal drinking age?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Sure, he might be safe to you. But to some of us, those who have lived in the pellet villages, the terrible sound of "Wakka wakka wakka" makes us run as the impending consumption of the village begins. I have been there my friends, hiding in the dark corners hoping not to be seen, watching as poor power pellets are gobbled up before my eyes.
At night, I can sometimes still hear the screams.
"They told me it was impossible. I replied with maniacal laughter." http://www.mydailyrant.com/
With the advent of so many video game movies
Mario
Street Fighter
Mortal Combat
Doom!?!
When are we going to see a pac man movie?
Great game though.
Too bad I won't see a Free implementation of the game in my lifetime though, unless I am lucky to live to be 103 (and no new copyright term extensions happen).
The true story of Pacman has been exposed.
I agree with the poster. Pac-man was great not because it was a technological marvel. It was great because it was simple, yet addictive. There is a whole lost genre of gaming because all games today have to be 3D and most of them have to be either first- or third-person. Don't get me wrong, there is a place for these games, but there should be more simple 2D games (2D in gameplay, not specifically in implementation of graphics.) What happened to the platformer? Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog? What happened to simple arcade-style games?
You know what my favorite game is right now? It's called BreakQuest. It's a fairly simple and straightforward Archanoid clone with updated graphics and an insane physics engine. It's simple, elegant, requires very little investment to learn, requires very little investment to continue playing, has a high replay value and it's bloody addictive.
And no, I don't work there.
http://www.retro64.com/breakquest.asp
Also check out Z-Ball. It's more traditional, but still very fun.
Game over:eeweewee wawa
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Computer games don't affect kids, I mean if Pac Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music.
-- Marcus Brigstocke
Does that include Slashdot of 25 years from now? Where a DIY project posting will include a holographic walkthrough for site visitors.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I don't have a lot of karma but I'm burnin' everything tonight,
I got a callus on my finger and my shoulder's hurtin' too,
Gonna hit the F5 'cuz my balls have done turned blue,
CHORUS:
I got Slashdot fever (Slashdot fever!)
It's drivin' my crazy (drivin' me crazy!)
Slashdot fever (Slashdot fever!)
Goin' outa my mind! (goin' outa my mind...)
I've got all the servers down, plus Roblimo's priv-key,
I don't R the F'in A; it's dupe that links to Roland P.
I got Goatse in my back door and through the other side,
'Cuz FreeBSD is dead, and Stephen King just died!
(Chorus)
I'm gonna post to the left and troll to the right,
Say the Dems are too slow, and the 'pubs are outa sight,
(Guitar solo)
Now I got 'em on the run and I'm lookin' for the high score,
Wish the "Funny" counted lots, as I'm just another karma whore,
I'm really cookin' now, moddin' everything in sight,
All my points are gone, I'll metamod tomorrow night,
I got Slashdot fever (Slashdot fever!)
It's drivin' my crazy (drivin' me crazy!)
Slashdot fever (Slashdot fever!)
Goin' outa my mind! (goin' outa my mind...)
UGeek
...both interiorlly, and exteriorlly.
And /.'ing will *still* manage to crash the servers, despite that being theoretically impossible with quantom computers and fusion-powered network switches ;)
Programming is an Art. I am an Artist. Does that mean I get to wear a daft hat?
In this fast changing world it is nice to find something familiar from the 80s that you can do without getting busted or hurting that crook knee. I get my kicks by walking down to the hen house and gathering some freshly laid eggs, but I figure most NYC apartments don't feature a hen house.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It's also *hard*, proving that challenging games are what people have always been looking for. Amoung people whom I know around my age (30-35) who grew up on this, everyone enjoys Ms Pac Man a lot more, it starts easier and becomes harder. Whereas, pacman doesn't. Local arcade here in Portland has 2 Ms Pacman machines that are always busy, while PacMan machine oftens stands lonely.
For those who ain't hip check out http://www.classicgaming.com/o2home/db/cart.asp?ma sterid=24&cartid=24. This game and the outcome of the legal actions set precedents for software copyright law.
I think yours is, however the first of a flood of predictions predicting a flood of articles.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Some Japanese guy programmed Pac-Man to run in Excel 5.0! Here's more Pac-mans (pac-men?)http://www.flamingmayo.com/firstchurchof pacman/false_idols.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_bloc
If you have Excel 97 or later (sorry, not OpenOffice) then you can play Pacelman. It's Pac-Man written in Excel complete with sound effects!
Imagine being able to run one 25-year-old program entirely within another 20+-year-old program. That's computing with power.
For more information, click here.
Yes. Unfortunately the holographic slashdot also includes holographic goatse links.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Oh bugger, I just have. Must - poke - out - mind's - eye
"If Pacman had affected us as kids we'd be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music."
Get your own free personal location tracker
http://www.geocities.jp/nchikada/pac/ I'm not sure if its brilliant or just an incredible waste of time and effort...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_bloc
FOUR WAYS IN WHICH MY LIFE IS JUST LIKE PAC-MAN'S
by John Crownover
1. Ever-present wail of sirens
2. Relentlessly pursued by ghosts
3. Four special pills daily keep ghosts at bay
4. Occasionally eat some fruit
(from www.mcsweeneys.net)
"show me all the blueprint show me all the blueprint show me all the blueprints"
"Wakka wakka wakka wakka... wakka wakka."
25 years later I'm still playing this mindless game and eating ghosts. Good lord I need to grow up.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
Was when I was 3 years old and my dad hoisted me up to the pac man machine. First thing I did was eat a ghost, and died. I realized then that video games like to rip you off by suprising you with dangers. I also thought that a better video game than pacman could be made by adding buttons that did something.
God spoke to me.
Obligatory Pac-man related comics:
VG Cats
Penny Arcade
Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me
I'll wait for the 25th anniversary of Robotron before I celebrate.
Maybe I'll finally be able to convince my wife that my vintage full-sized machines are actually collectables and worth the rec room floorspace that they eat up.
Yup. I hang out on the Gamecube boards on IGN a lot, and they LOVE Ikaruga. It's a REALLY hard space-shooter type game. Also Viewtiful Joe (can be very difficult on adult setting). And the XBox people seem to love the murderous Ninja Gaiden.
does this mean he'll finally get lower car insurance rates?
P P P P P P Pac-Man......Pac-Man....
Eat them up YUM! YUM!
25 years already? You'd think I would've at least made it to level three by now.
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20050326
It must be Windows. It needs half a gig of RAM and a hardware-accelerated graphics card just to run Solitaire.
If I had a quarter for everytime that I played Pac Man...
:q!
People should check out Viewtiful Joe and Ikaruga. Squash Halo, those are difficult games. Each is very very worthwhile. Ikaruga should have been a bloody best-seller in 3 months but people who advertise games advertise games that can be beaten easily proving that advertisings like easy games. They're turning the next generation into a bunch of gaming pansies.
I turned 25 last November. So I'm older than that early, prehistoric, primeval, primordial, primitive, archaic game! Oh, my...
:'-(
Argh! I've seen... even monochrome versions with huge pixels and almost no IA in the ghosts. I'm soooooooo extremely badly anciently OLD!
I wouldn't fit among the kids at the jeriatric... I'll look for a comfortable wooden box in a museum basement
Try Ubuntu GNU/Linux, it's great!!!
Pac-Man is not hard, because Pac-Man can be "solved" by running a specific pattern on each level. The ghost behavior does not truly randomize. Ms. Pac-Man does not have that problem.
Doodlet doodlet doodlet doot,
(repeat)
here
STOP POSTING THIS GARBAGE!
And for those who don't know who Billy Mitchell is......... Billy Mitchell, 33, of Fort Lauderdale scored a perfect 3,333,360 points on a PacMan machine in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire. The perfect score is achieved by playing for six hours, through 256 levels of PacMan, eating every dot, energizer, blue ghost, and piece of fruit on every single level, without dying once. After the 256th level, the game freezes.
Madre de Dios! Es El Pollo Diablo! -- Captain Blondebeard
If you are a PacMan fan you should check out the GameCube remake of a couple years past. IIRC, up to 3 ghosts controlled by GameCube controllers would chase PacMan around, who was controlled by GBA. PacMan had a top down view of the whole maze, including locations of all the ghosts. Each ghost had an over-the-shoulder isometric style view of the area around him/her, and this area of view could be momentarily increased by eating one of the cherries. It was great multi-player fun, trying to yell out the location of PacMan and trap him into a corner. The game was distributed as a stand-alone demo, and is also available on the PacMan Worlds game for the GameCube (I think that's what it was called.)
"If Pacman had affected us as kids we'd be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music."
Mmmm... pills.
Space and Computers.
People wax on poetically about all the classic video games (Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Defender, Space Invaders, etc), but I suspect their popularity was due to their novelty rather than their appeal.
They were fun, colorful, but there's too much meaning being attached to them. It appealed to the future-nerds (myself included).
If you had the option of being trapped on a deserted island for a year with one video game (and the hardware and electricity to play it), would it be Pac Man (all safe and colorful), or Empire Earth II in all it's glory and challenge?
You're not worthy of watching the movie until you've survived the TV cartoon series.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
25 years and now works as transsexual prostitute.. life is a bitch :|
Fucking a fat girl is like riding a scooter... it's fun 'til someone sees you.
When I was in 4th grade, I did a book report on the book Mastering Pac-Man by Blackjack card-counting author Ken Uston, who was mysteriously found dead years later. Most likely due to his connection to the world of Vegas Blackjack rather than his connection to Pac-Man. Then again, maybe Midway really did have him killed.
will be Duke Nukem Forever. Especially the fully immersive strip bar.
Just to clarify... that machine is in a place called Funspot, which is in Weir's Beach (called "the wee-ahs" by the locals). Funspot should be a landmark for every geek, since they're famous as being one of the largest arcades in the country, even to this day. The coolest thing... they keep EVERY game that has come out (including pinball machines), and in working condition. It's absolutely incredible. If you remember an old video game or pinball machine that you loved as a kid, chances are there's a working original version at Funspot. Definitely a road trip destination for any true geek.
I don't respond to AC's.
now i'm no big fan of god (he's kind of a bastard) but something tells me he'd say:
"sticks and stones......"
except in his case, sticks and stones can't even break his bones, cause he's god.
that kind of long-winded deliberated blasphemy comes off as pretty weak.
the real message behind it is: "i am totally powerless to do anything to god, so i have to settle for saying a bunch of naughty thing"
it's so obviously self-defeating, unless you just like the exercise of it. but what's the excercise of it? i don't know. it's pretty weak.
i don't even believe in god, but i mean the chipmunks i see running through the grass in my backyard look meaner and more sinful than you. your post on the otherhand...... is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. pretty pitiful.
it's one thing to threaten a human being with all this violence and sexual abomination, but a diety? an omnipotent deity?
sticks and stones. you're nuts.
it's weird: apparently you get a thrill out of threatening an abstract super-human entity, but at the same time you don't realize how pathetic you look to a mere human-- let alone a superhuman deity. pretty weird.
weak. (some of the lines were real bummers. real stinkers. "maggot"? black and blue all over? come on.)
weak.
In my day (insert topic) were better!
Kids these day don't know about (insert topic).
Just look at (insert new item). Just bells and whistle no (insert item).
Not according to Nintendo: "Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." -Kristian Wilson, Nintendo Representative, 1989
I recently picked up a copy of Namco Museum for the X Boxfor $15.00 at Target. It has Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, Galaxian, Galalga, Pole Position 1 and 2, and a couple of variants of them that I hadn't seen before. My 18 year old daughter is nuts over it. The 23 year old wishes it had Moon Patrol, a Williams game not Namco, sadly.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
You just have to go outside. But most of the NPCs are boring, stupid and annoying and there are a lot of boring cut scenes that can't be skipped through between the action sequences.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
... to bad about another 80's icon, the Beastie Boys.
I scrolled down on that link and read that the B-Boys' new single is to "feature" on the OC.
Ca-ching!!! SOLD!
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
It's pinball! It's a video game! Both suck!
Real Video Game Heros!
Today we salute you, Mr. Moving Half-Eaten Pie. For 25 years you have been trapped in a box, forced to eat pellets all day and run from ghosts. But when you get a hold of one of those Power Pellets, you let those ghosts know who's boss
SUPERNATURAL MUNCHER~
So today, we raise an ice cold Bud to you, oh champion of the arcade, for you are, the baddest moving cheese wheel ever.
unable to resolve function slashdot.sig(), aborting...
All these posts, and not one link so that I can immediately satisfy my craving to munch dots and run away from ghosts?
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/pacman.html
Not really. Just bring your Winchester lever action along, and you'll have hours of fun, and the NPCs actually taste good, too.
...-.-
"Sinistar" is still one of the best games out there. Hard as hell, action packed, and a great way to eat through quarters. heh.
:)
Actually, "Gauntlet" was the best way to eat through quarters - until you realize that the levels start to repeat themselves.
How many Pac-Man levels were there, anyway?
If you're not getting enough action sequences, you probably aren't wandering the more dangerous random encounter areas.
Sigs are like bumper stickers.
IMHO.
Yeah, pacman was big. And yeah, there were a few videogames before pong. But pong was the first time that most people, I mean Joe Sixpack, not us nerds, got to *interact* with something on a "TV" screen. Where you could turn a knob and see something directly change on the screen.
I think pong was a more novel experience for people than pacman. Just MHO.
I got a pocket full of quarters, and I'm headed to the arcade.
I don't have a lot of money, but I'm bringing ev'rything I made.
I've got a callus on my finger, and my shoulder's hurting too.
I'm gonna eat them all up, just as soon as they turn blue.
Chorus:
'Cause I've got Pac-Man fever;
Pac-Man fever.
It's driving me crazy.
Driving me crazy.
I've got Pac-Man fever;
Pac-Man fever.
I'm going out of my mind.
Going out of my mind.
I've got Pac-Man fever;
Pac-Man fever.
I'm going out of my mind.
Going out of my mind.
I've got all the patterns down, up until the ninth key.
I've got Speedy on my tail, and I know it's either him or me.
So I'm heading out the back door and in the other side;
Gonna eat the cherries up and take them all for a ride.
Chorus
I'm gonna fake it to the left, and move to the right;
'Cause Pokey's too slow, and Blinky's out of sight.
Guitar solo
Now I've got them on the run, and I'm looking for the high score;
So it's once around the block, And I'll slide back out the side door.
I'm really cookin' now, eating everything in sight.
All my money's gone, so I'll be back tomorow night.
'Cause I've got Pac-Man fever;
Pac-Man fever.
It's driving me crazy.
Driving me crazy.
I've got Pac-Man fever;
Pac-Man fever.
I'm going out of my mind.
Going out of my mind.
Repeat and fade
"If video games affected us as kids, we'd be running around darkened corridors, scoffing white pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."
- unknown (mainly because I CBA looking for it...)
Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
There's this yellow Pie-graph that wildly fluctuates between 100 and 85%...
It has a birthday...
And we are celebrating it 25 years after the fact...
Where do you guys want the keg?
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
"Pac-Man Turns 25"
:(
But he still lost his hair a long time ago.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Take a look at this page, off topic but definately interesting: http://wilkersondesign.com/nathan/lego.html
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
Just thought you guys would like this..
Conan O'Brien featured Ms. Pac-Man on his show tonight. She appeared as "Bulimic Ms. Pac-Man" in the reoccuring "New Characters" sketch. It was basically a clip of the gameplay in reverse...
HILARIOUS! It's cool to see the writers at Conan doing this kind of geek stuff.
I just pooped your party.
It's people like YOU who worry me, dude!!
most of the people don't know but there's a complete pacman disassembly and the associated C++ version of pacman using that disassembly. You can find it in emule searching for vigasoco...
I love playing PacPC (freeware for Windows9x) but I haven't found a Linux equivalent that comes really really close to PACMAN. Is there such a thing?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Happy Birthday to Me ! Happy Birthday to Me ! Happy Birthday to Me !
For the occasion, I urge everybody to find and watch The Simpsons ep #343, "Homer And Ned's Hail Mary Pass". Homer is designed to prepare the superbowl half-time shows and watching old tapes of former shows he admires the genius of Superbowl #16 half-time show featuring the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. pacman, complete with dancing ghosts and Olivia Newton John's "Let's Get Physical" song. Unmissable
"Words of wisdom: drop that zero and get with the hero" -- Vanilla Ice
I ran around the house, eating everything in sight.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Wish I had mod points... Tetris is a no-brainer desert island game for me.
Look fast for the 'cameo' of PAC-MAN in the (in)famous Disney movie TRON (1982).
As for a 'real' PAC-MAN movie, it'd have to be done in the style of and probably like the old (but rather good) CGI cartoon Reboot.
That is about all you'll find in arcades nowadays....
:p
Driving games.
Shooting games.
Fighting games.
Where did the diversity go?
That is why I'd rather play the classic videogames from the last century whenever I can.
I think STREET FIGHTER paved the way for the current glut and stagnation in arcade videogaming. It had great graphics, was modeled (somewhat) on real life, was insanely popular, and spawned many sequels (and knock-offs) as well as a poorly recieved motion-picture.
Success breeds more success which led to stagnation in the genre.
Including STREET FIGHTER, I have played or know about:
MORTAL KOMBAT
KILLER INSTINCT
SAMURAI SHOWDOWN / WORLD HEROES
ART OF FIGHTING
DARKSTALKERS
TECH ROMANCER
SOUL CALIBUR
TEKKEN
There are probaly more but I cannot remember them right at the moment.
They are all fighting games that had some success which led to the current lack of creativity in the arcade scene.
I think the best thing that could be done would be to simply re-issue classic videogames from a bygone era like:
PAC-MAN
TEMPEST
DEFENDER
TRON
MONACO GP
etc.
Most of the classic games I liked to play were put out by basically 3 companies:
BALLY/MIDWAY
ATARI
WILLIAMS
Back then, programmers had to use ingenuity to make entertaining games. Nowadays, its just "graphics, graphics, graphics."
Incredible but true.
:)
He did it to prove that it could be done without 'running patterns' (which I used to do to kill time when playing PAC-MAN). By doing this, his accomplishment is surely uncontestable!
By the way, I know that at the extreme levels of play, the ghost monsters will only reverse direction when an energizer dot is eaten. Does Mitchell's score include eating all 4 ghost monsters at this extreme level of play--that seems impossible. Is it possible?
On a related note, I 'beat' TAPPER in a similar fashion to find out, 8.5 hours later, that the game starts all the way over as if you put a coin in the slot and started playing the game after 256 'boards'.
I guess back then, the programmers figured nobody would play that many levels in a videogame and used a single byte as the level counter.
Reminicent of the Y2K problems, eh?
True, the ghost monster movement is 'random' but there are still 2 (3 sorta) ways to beat this game.
1) Keep away from the ghosts until they 'reverse direction' twice. After that they will continue to move in the same direction until either the end of the board or Ms. PAC-MAN 'dies'.
This is 'similar' to the Galaga 'shooting gallery' trick to turn that game into a giant bonus round. On a related note, years and years and years ago I personally saw someone make a GALAGA game stop working on 'board 0' ('256'). He accumulated 3,180,180 points in the process while the enemy ships shot at his spaceship! The best I can do in a legit GALAGA game is around 100,000. Using the 'shooting gallery' trick, I can get a million points easily unless I am totally 'out of it'.
2) After performing 1), just lead the monsters about and duck into the assorted 'safe spots' in the various mazes--the monsters are programmed to 'avoid you' if done properly.
3) As an alternative to 1) and 2), find a Ms. PAC-MAN game that has been 'modded' so she travels much faster than the ghosts. This is extremely helpful to play the game at the advanced levels where you can barely stay out in front of the ghosts. However, playing this version of the game is a bit boring as you are pretty much 'invincible' through 'super speed'.
In closing, I really liked a number of BALLY/MIDWAY video games but stopped playing them due to them being 'pattern driven' and switched over to STREET FIGHTER by CAPCOM. I do remember spending lots of money on BURGERTIME before I figured out the patterns for that game. Getting to a million points by board 7-8 was rather easy. Once, I played to the extreme levels of play and found that the game became basically impossible to play--the eggs, hot dogs, and pickles moved MUCH, MUCH faster than I did in the game!
..written in VB, needs Windows 2000 or newer: download (source)
And don't expect too much - it's only VB and the first try of doing a game...
I lag