"Phew, maybe I'm safe here... they can't find me in this tunnel!"
"How many left pills are there? Can't see in this darkness..."
"Oh no, not again! That damned Blinky's here again! I have to tackle him or I won't clear the maze..."

If only Pac-Man (named Puck Man in Japan) could talk, those would probably be few of the sentences he'd say during his tough race to clear all 255 stages (mazes) from pills and reach freedom. The reason why he's there it's a mystery, all he knows is to avoid to let four bloody ghosts eat him.

The plot reminds much as the Minotaur tale from the Greek mythology: he'd been entrapped by the king of Crete, Minos who paid an architect from Athens, named Dedalus, to build the maze. Every year a few guys and girls were entrapped inside of the maze and offerend to Minotaur as a sacrifice - he was always hungry for human flesh. At this point of the story came Theseus who finally killed Minotaur and escaped the maze of Knossos, aided by the king's daughter, Ariadne.

What does the Cretese mythology have to do with this videogame? Oh well, try thinking of Pac-Man as Theseus, the ghosts as Minotaur, and the programmers (responsible for placing the unlucky yellow man inside of the maze) as Minos. And oh here's by chance the full list of inventors of such cruel tale - I mean the staff at Namco who designed the game: Toru Iwantani (game designer), Hideyuki Mokajima and crew (programmers), Toshio Kai (music and sound).

OK, now it's time for good manners, so let's introduce the game's characters in order of appearance: Blinky, Pinky, Inky, Clyde and the star, Pac-Man.

Gameplay is extremely easy to understand: you have to operate Pac-Man inside of the maze with a four-directions joystick only, eating all pills along the way and avoiding to let ghosts get him. Three lives are available, a bonus try is awarded at 10.000 points (quite impossible not to notice the bonus life jingle, much similar to the ring of an old alarm-clock. That's all.

Ghosts will do their best to capture the hungry yellow man.. never understimate the tactical intelligence of the "fab four", each of them endowed with unique features: Pinky is extremely fast; Blinky is an excellent hunter; Inky prefers moving randomly in quiet areas (he apparently doesn't love crowds around him); Clyde is the slower though most intelligent of the whole group, he's a true hunter - probably a sort of grandfather for Predator (if you don't know who's that, well I suggest you to play Capcom's videogame, Alien Vs. Predator or read the comics!).

There's a tunnel connecting the left and right sides of the labyrinth, and it's a great help for our hero: infact he's much faster than ghosts when moving there, and they also seem to get confused when you disappear on one side and appear on the other. Take care not to enter the tunnel when a ghost is entering from the other side, or you'll see your friend melt like an ice-cream under the sunlight!

Four chances are offered to become hunters from prey. Take a look at the maze, and you'll immediately notice four blinking large pills placed one per each corner (hey, how many small pills are there in total? Oh sure, 240...), those are the so-called energy pills which allow Pac-Man to eat monsters within a few seconds.

Soon after eating the pill, all ghosts change their face and look quite scared, they also all become blue (ever read the instruction manual of a car? They use to bring each colour some sorta poetical name... so I call this colour as "terror blue" hehe!). You can use the break-time to complete the maze or eat as many ghosts as possible, which are worth a lot of points. Then, as the power of the energy pill is about to estinguish, they start flashing then everything goes back to normality and Pac-Man will have to start escaping again.

There's another way to increase your score: take a look at the fruit below the ghost's place. It appears on sometimes (maximum twice per stage).

Difficulty level becomes harder and harder as you clear the mazes, but also the value of fruits grows - they're shown on the bottom-right part of the screen. The bottom-left on-screen indicator shows the remaining lives, finally current score and highest scores are shown above the maze.

The primary objective is making the game last as long as possible, of course, making the highest possible score. Every eaten pill is worth 10 points, energy pills awar us with a 50 points bonus, plus ghosts bring 200 (the first one), 400 (the second), 800 (the third) and 1600 (if we get all four of them!) points!

Levels can be identified by the fruit appearing on the center of the maze. There are various of them (cherry, strawberry, peach, etc.) and are worth 100 to 5.000 points. They become items after level 8 such as bells and keys. We have to clear the maze twice before seeing a new item except for the key which remains the same after level 13.

Items are:

Level 1	cherries	100 points
Level 2	strawberry	200 points
Levels 3 and 4	peach	500 points
Levels 5 and 6	apple	700 points
Levels 7 and 8	grapes	1.000 points
Levels 9 and 10	Namco logo	2.000 points
Levels 11 and 12	bell	3.000 points
Levels 13 and above	key	5.000 points

Undocumented side effects for Pac-Man professional gamers: intense pain on the wrist used to operate the joystick. Luckily enough there are few intermissions leting us take a few seconds of rest. At every two or four levels you'll watch a funny animation having with the yellow man and his adversaries as stars. A brief breaktime, short but necessary and then again... Wacka! Wacka! Wacka!