How to play Jr. Pac-Man online
- Move Jr. Pac-Man: arrow keys
- Choose a skill level: F11 (the console’s Select switch)
- Start a new game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch) or Space
- Save and load your progress: Ctrl + 0–9 saves to a slot, Alt + 0–9 loads it
Gameplay
The rules follow the Pac-Man family. You guide Junior around a maze, eating every dot, while the ghosts Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Tim chase him. You start with three turns and lose one each time a ghost catches Junior. Eat a power pill and for a while the ghosts flee and can be eaten for points. Clear all the dots to move on to the next maze.
The mazes are bigger than the screen, and the 2600 version scrolls them up and down as Junior nears the top or bottom edge. The big twist is the bonus item that wanders through the maze. Every dot it touches becomes a large dot worth 50 points instead of 10. But if you leave it alone for too long, it will destroy the power pills it runs into. Dots slow Junior down, and large dots slow him even more. A bonus turn is awarded at 15,000 points.
| What you eat | Points |
|---|---|
| Dot | 10 |
| Large dot (touched by the bonus item) | 50 |
| Power pill | 50 |
| Ghosts, per power pill | 200, 400, 800, 1,600 |
| Bonus items (tricycle, kite, drum, balloon, train, kitty, root beer) | 100, 200, 500, 700, 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 |
Skill levels
Select offers four skill levels, shown in the lower right corner of the screen. With one teddy bear only one ghost chases you. Two and three teddy bears add a second and third ghost. The toy candy level is the hardest, with all four ghosts. Each level is also faster than the one before.
Tips
- Save the power pills. Wait until the ghosts are close, lead them towards a pill, eat it and turn on them straight away.
- Clear dots first. Dots slow Junior down, so empty corridors are the best places to escape or to chase ghosts after a power pill.
- Use the corners. Junior turns corners faster than the ghosts, so lots of turns help you pull away.
- Let the bonus item work, then eat it. Allow it to turn plenty of dots into 50-point dots, but catch it before it reaches a power pill.
- Listen. The bonus item’s stomping sound tells you where it is when it’s off screen.
The story behind Jr. Pac-Man
The arcade Jr. Pac-Man was not made by Namco. General Computer Corporation, the company behind Ms. Pac-Man, developed it on Namco’s Pac-Man hardware, and Bally Midway released it in December 1983. Its new ideas were wide, sideways-scrolling mazes with no escape tunnels and the dot-changing bonus items.
GCC also made the Atari 2600 conversion, which was completed in 1984. By then the home video game market had collapsed, and the cartridge stayed unreleased. In 1986, with interest in video games returning after the success of the Nintendo Entertainment System, Atari Corporation relaunched the 2600 as a smaller, cheaper model, and Jr. Pac-Man finally came out that October. Versions for the Atari 5200 and Atari 8-bit computers were also finished in 1984, but they were cancelled.
