SUPER PAC MAN by Eddies' Cat Un-Interactive October 1997 This is a loose conversion of the old Namco game Super Pac Man. It runs on ST, STe, Falcon and probably TT too. Control is by joystick or Jaguar controller. The game will use whatever you press the fire button on. Press button A if you're using a Jaguar controller. If you're running this on a Falcon, start it from ST Low or ST Medium otherwise the desktop colours will mess up when you exit the program. It's all Ataris' fault. If you've got Nemesis fitted in your Falcon it will mess up the joystick signals, either turn off Nemesis or use a Jagpad when playing this game. Super Pac Man was the second sequel to Pac Man, after Ms. Pac Man. My conversion differs from it mainly in the handling of the green power pills, also there's no bonus round and there is no "lucky target" feature either. Ghost logic is a bit different too. Those wanting a 100% accurate version should either get the version on one of the European Namco Museum CDs for the Playstation, or download the PC Super Pac Man emulator from the Internet. Super Pac Man plays very like Pac Man apart from the doors/keys and green power pills. I'm sure you can work out how to open the doors so I'll just explain about the green power pills. In my version, eating a green pill freezes the ghosts. They can still kill you if you walk into them, unless they are blue. You can use the green pills to either stop the ghosts while you tackle a tricky part of the maze or eat a blue power pill first and then freeze them so you can eat all the ghosts in one go. TIPS Eating all four ghosts from one blue power pill gives a "Kenneth Williams" bonus. Eating some ghosts, another blue power pill, then the rest of the ghosts will not. The red ghost is more intelligent than the others. The magenta ghost is faster than the others. Pac Man can corner faster than the ghosts, but make sure you corner early! Pac Man moves slightly slower when eating things. To finish a level, you have to eat all the dots, but you don't always have to eat all the keys.. BACKGROUND Super Pac Man was inspired by the awful control systems featured in games like Dynabusters, Pacman on E's, etc. I knew I could do better, and with this game I hope you'll agree I have. The main problems with moving a character around a confined maze are handling diagonal movements of the joystick, and allignment with passages. I use a "direction-switching" method which lines you up with where you want to go according to what direction you're facing at the time. This game was put together in about 6 weeks. Programmers may be interested to know that it runs at 50 frames a second on an STfm, unlike some other Pac Man games I could mention... GREETINGS To: ... Jody Smith, for the sillier sound samples and making the "Kenneth Williams" bonus so good. ... Keith Ainsworth of Retrogamer fanzine, for bringing the original Super Pac Man game to my attention. ... Rainer Weizel, danke fur das gelt, Ich kann ein kleine Deusche sprache! ... Moondog, for encouragement and feedback. ... Teque of Aggression, an excellent musician until he started doing crap like $00a3. ... Cream for the great Playsid STe. ... Tat "Steve" Tersall. ... The Maggie Team, of course. ... Leon O'Reillys' pet ducks, "Quackers" and "A la orange". ... The crew of Pure Nonsense disk magazine (Taggart, Oor Wullie, Pint'O'Heavy). The disk magazine that's so underground, no-one's allowed to read it! ... Ultimate Sock, the best demo-group in the entire world. CONTACTING ME If you like this game, why not send me something nice in the post? Alicia Silverstone obviously won't fit through my letterbox, so maybe a disk of something Retro or ST-related would be a good idea. In return, I will smile slightly. Ed Cleveland 37 Oakhill Road Liverpool Merseyside L13 5UE England