Ms. Pac-Man

Ms. Pac-Man for Atari 5200 is Atari's 1983 home-console adaptation of the maze game first released in arcades by Midway in 1982. It keeps the central chase-and-collection contest intact: guide Ms. Pac-Man through a maze, eat every dot, and avoid four pursuing ghosts. The 5200 cartridge supports one or two players, with players taking turns rather than sharing the maze, and it uses the system's joystick for the four cardinal directions. Atari identifies this North American release as cartridge CX5243.

A maze is cleared by collecting its dots, but each route is a decision between safe territory and danger. Contact with a normally colored ghost costs one of Ms. Pac-Man's lives. Energy pills briefly turn the ghosts blue, allowing her to eat them in sequence for increasing scores before their eyes travel back to the center chamber. The warning flashes and change in music signal that the opportunity is ending. Dots, pills, ghosts, and the bonus items that enter the maze all contribute to the score, while an extra life is awarded at 10,000 points.

The Atari 5200 version gives its campaign a structured set of eight starting skill levels, shown with a teddy bear and then fruit symbols from cherries through bananas. Clearing a maze automatically advances play to a higher level. The manual describes Cherries as matching the arcade game's difficulty, while the later selections provide tougher starts. After the Banana level, the game continues with random bonus items and alternating maze patterns, so a long run shifts away from a fixed sequence without changing the basic objective.

Four maze layouts organize that progression. The first layout is used for the earliest skill levels; a longer, twisting second maze follows through the middle choices; and a more restrictive third maze appears at the higher settings. After the game reaches its random-fruit phase, a fourth layout joins the rotation. Escape tunnels connect opposite edges of a maze and offer another way to break pursuit. The manual also notes that dots slow Ms. Pac-Man down, making open routes and timely turns important when the ghosts close in.

This Atari 5200 port retains the game's short cartoon intermissions, which trace the meeting and courtship of Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man before a stork arrives in the third scene. Fruit and other treats appear twice per screen, with values rising from the teddy bear and cherries to the banana; ghosts are worth progressively more when several are eaten during one energy-pill interval. Those details give the Atari 5200 game a home version of the familiar arcade rhythm while adding selectable starting difficulty and a clear maze-and-skill progression for repeat play.