Ms. Pac-Man

Atari released Ms. Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 in 1983, bringing the maze chase to the Video Computer System in a cartridge designed for one joystick. Ms. Pac-Man starts below the ghosts' central chamber and moves up, down, left, and right through the maze. The objective is to collect every dot while staying clear of the ghosts, then clear the next maze when the last dot disappears. The cartridge retains the series' central risk-and-reward rhythm: a direct collision costs a life unless the ghosts have been made vulnerable.

Four energy pills sit in the maze. Eating one turns the ghosts blue for a short time, allowing Ms. Pac-Man to chase them instead. A single pill can yield 200 points for the first ghost, then 400, 800, and 1,600 for additional ghosts eaten before the effect ends. Eaten ghosts return as eyes to the central chamber and re-enter play. If they are not caught, the blue ghosts blink shortly before returning to normal, signaling that the chance to score from them is about to end.

Dots are worth 10 points and energy pills 50. The game also sends bonus items through the maze: cherry, strawberry, orange, pretzel, apple, pear, and banana, worth from 100 to 5,000 points. These items move through the maze rather than remaining at a fixed center location. Players begin with three lives, shown at the lower left of the display, and receive an extra Ms. Pac-Man after reaching 10,000 points.

The left and right openings act as wraparound tunnels: leaving on one side returns Ms. Pac-Man on the other. The manual specifically presents the tunnels as an escape route from pursuing ghosts, and notes that tunnel arrangements differ between mazes. The joystick is used for every turn and for entering those side passages; the red button can start a selected game. The Atari 2600's difficulty switches are not used by this cartridge.

Game Select provides four ways to play. The Cherries setting is the arcade-style version, with all four ghosts in pursuit. One Bear, Two Bears, and Three Bears reduce the number of pursuing ghosts for beginner, novice, and intermediate play. These selectable reduced-ghost modes are a home version feature that lets the same maze-and-scoring rules be played with less pressure than the full four-ghost game.

All variations begin on the cherries level and progress through the banana level. After a player survives the banana level, the game alternates between its third and fourth mazes. Every second maze clear randomizes the fruit selection, while the duration of the blue-ghost state decreases. That progression preserves the arcade game's escalating pace while giving the 2600 release its own selectable challenge settings and a clearly defined long-game structure.

Compared with the original arcade Ms. Pac-Man, the 2600 adaptation keeps the changing mazes, moving bonus items, four named ghosts, power-pill reversals, and an end-of-game cartoon. Its home-console presentation is controlled from the 2600's Game Select and Reset switches rather than coin-operated starts, and its optional one-, two-, and three-ghost modes reshape the arcade-style chase for less experienced players. The result is a compact single-player conversion focused on route planning, timing power pills, using wraparound tunnels, and deciding when a dangerous ghost chase is worth the points.