Ms. Pac-Man

Ms. Pac-Man for Sega Master System is Tengen's 1991 conversion of the arcade maze game. The Master System release was issued in Europe, with Tengen credited as both developer and publisher.

Ms. Pac-Man clears each board by eating every dot while avoiding Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Sue. Contact with a ghost costs a life, but an Energizer turns the ghosts blue for a short time, allowing them to be eaten for increasing point values. Fruit also appears during play for bonus points.

The Arcade maze setting uses the four-maze progression associated with the original game, complete with its changing layouts and bonus fruit. It is not a completely exact arcade conversion, however: the third maze in this Master System version contains extra pellets on its left and right sides.

Tengen's version adds a choice of four maze sets: Arcade, Mini, Big, and Strange. The larger layouts scroll vertically when they do not fit on screen, so the maze selection changes more than the colors or presentation alone.

Before starting, players can set the difficulty, choose a starting level, and configure the Pac Booster. The Booster can be disabled, kept active, or left selectable during play; when used, it makes Ms. Pac-Man move faster. The menu's difficulty settings include Easy, Hard, and Crazy.

The game supports one player and several two-player arrangements: alternating turns, cooperation, and competition. Its cooperative and competitive modes let both players be active at once, unlike the arcade game's standard alternating play. Each maze variation ends after round 32, followed by a fourth intermission, The End, in which Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man wave goodbye.

This is the feature-rich Tengen line of conversions rather than the later Namco Game Gear version or a plain arcade reproduction. It shares the expanded maze choices, speed option, and multiplayer modes of Tengen's NES release; the related Genesis conversion has enhanced 16-bit graphics and sound, while the Master System version's maze colors are not arcade-faithful.