Pac-Man 2 - Riding the Midnight Train

Written by Michael

The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only.

Welcome back!  I’m going to admit to being a little less-than-eager to write this post.  See, the game is a lot more arcade and a lot less adventure than we originally hoped.  

But I’m a trooper.  I’ll get through this.

I don’t have the reflexes (or the patience) for arcade games like I did 30 years ago.  But I suppose that’s many of the people in this room right now, because those of us who still prefer adventures often prefer using our brain over our braun.  It’s why, when the comments exploded on our coverage of Fate of Atlantis, the majority of us seem to prefer the “team” and “wits” paths over the “fists” choice.

Still, this is a fun game, and a lot less “arcade” than some other titles.  

Emulation notes:  I'm not an arcade game player, and haven't been one for quite some time. It became apparent as I played this game. When I started out, I intended not to cheat in any way, except one major modern emulation item I am using: save states.  I have made liberal use of these to save-scum through some of the rougher arcade segments.  This game does provide passwords you can type in to restore to various goalposts of the game, but I figured early on that my use of save states in this way would not count as cheating for the blog, as our main focus is the adventure content, the puzzles, the use of items.

That was the first post. In the next post after this, the arcade action got so rough for me, that I used a GameGenie cheat code.  It was a tough call -- for the pure adventure games, cheating is not allowed -- but we're more interested in the adventure content here.  I used just one code, which topped off my power pellets.  It saved me a lot of save scumming, and wear & tear on my wrist that has mild carpal tunnel.  

Please forgive me.  It was either that or abandoning the game, and I've only done that on a game that was certified as incompletable due to a show-stopping bug. 

I am using USB-connected generic SNES-style controller connected to my regular desktop PC.  It works perfectly with the emulator, all the buttons properly mapped.  That said, at the start I hadn’t changed my screenshot key from the default in the emulator, which was a button on the keyboard.  Later, I realized the game didn’t use the shoulder buttons for anything, so I remapped the key to the controller.  It was still a challenge to take photos during arcade sequences, but it made it a little easier.  

I believe I can fly.

I spent the first handful of minutes in the game learning the controls and accidentally pressing the wrong buttons.  I accidentally wasted some Power Pellets by shooting those instead of the regular slingshot pellets, so I did some exploration, and then restarted the game.  

I forgot to mention what I am doing.  When we finished the last post, our lovely wife told us that we didn’t have any milk for our baby, so we need to go get some.

If I go too far in either direction, there’s signs to point me back.

Leaving the house, first thing I do is fully stock up on power pellets from the tree to the left of the house.  From there, I head down the block.  But I notice, at some point, signs with a picture of a milk bottle and an arrow pointing the opposite direction of where I am going.  So I need to go the other way.

The way to do that is to make Pac took in the direction I want him to go.  When I do that, there’s a chance he’ll change direction.  The happier he is, the more likely he is to change direction when I want him to.  But certain things make him less happy.  For example, if I hit him repeatedly with the slingshot.  Or, if he gets chased by an animal.  Things like that.  The more unhappy he gets, his facial expression changes, he stomps around, and is more likely to ignore me.  

He also reacts to certain things differently, which had an impact much later in this post.

Down the sidewalk to the left of the house, there’s an apple tree, and if I slingshot an apple to the ground in front of our guy, he’ll eat it and get happier.  I feed him a few, and he looks like he won the lottery.

Off to the east of Chateau de Pac, there’s a farm.  We first pass a farmhouse, with a sleeping farmer in front.  If I try to sneak past him, there’s a chance he’ll wake up and yell at us, and that makes Pac sad.  But if I shoot down a bale of hay that’s hanging out the loft, it lands on the farmer and keeps him contained.  But, if I shoot that pile again, it clears the hay from his head and he will definitely yell at us.

So, like the game instructions say, shoot everything, you never know.  Fortunately, in this case, leaving the farm area and going back to the house resets the farm, and I can re-enter fresh.  I might just have to do something like eat apples or pet my dog in order to get my spirits up.

For this mission, I need to make Pac-Man notice a glass jar near a cow, and get him to milk the cow.  If I shoot the chicken out of the coop, he just chases us and clucks at us and that’s a bad scene.  But if you shoot the crow from the clothes line up above, he’ll swoop down and chase you, but knock over the bottle in the process.  

Is this a scene from a Larry game?

Then, a disgruntled Pac will notice the bottle and use it on the cow, and I suppose the udder fun of milking a cow makes him really happy.  (No, Busca, that is not a typo in the last sentence.)

Mission complete.  Now, to a cut scene where that mysterious Mr. Claw yells at the ghosts for not thwarting Pac-Man’s progress.

And suddenly, it’s time for a new mission.

Our lovely wife is sending us out again, this time to get mountain flowers for Lucy’s birthday.  Wait, who’s Lucy?  Guess that’s not important.  She gives us a ticket for something called the Rope-Way.

East of the farm was a station.  I tried a whole load of things to try to get Pac to ride the lift, but I eventually figured out that you need to shoot the sign for the station to get him to notice it.

Guess there’s a total of 4 levels I’ll be playing?

Exiting the station and going to the right, I get myself immediately killed.

Everybody must get stoned

Fortunately, there’s unlimited lives and the most recent ‘flag’ was just a few feet to the left, when I left the Rope-Way station.

The solution seems to be shooting Pac to stop him from walking in the path of the falling rock, and then shooting the “Danger” sign to spin around and show an arrow.  That means we need to go up.  Shooting the rope drops it, but before I climb, I’ll keep exploring to the east.

Yes, this game makes you frag your own character constantly, both on purpose and accidentally.  He’s pissed at me, and doesn’t want to look and move where I want him to, but drinking from the nearby spring refreshes his attitude.

Follow the butterflies

As we head further down the path, we walk along some trees.  Don’t shoot and eat the blueberries, it seems they are poisonous.  But chasing the butterfly multiple times makes Pac happy.

Further on, we come across a pile of logs that we should NOT shoot, because then they tumble and run us over.  But if Pac uses it as a bench for a rest, shooting him to move is acceptable.

And then, the start of the true arcade game.  I’m not going to go into hard-core detail about this; let’s just muscle through the arcade stuff.

First are a set up platforms to jump across, and we can drop them by shooting the supports from underneath.  That lets us access the bottom one that otherwise was blocked.

Instructions to ride a train car

I really do like the colors in here.

We then can jump into a mine car on a track, and go through the mine.  At times during this trip, I’ll need to jump over ghosts carrying boulders, or knock boulders from the sky, or jump over obstacles in the way of the train car.

If I miss the jump...

At the end of the line

When I manage to get through this session, I can jump onto a rope to climb down from the train platform.

Pac’s already pissed at me for shooting him (that’s how I got him to jump on the rope) and then some water falls on him from a steel girder above, and he’s livid.  I start exploring, and find I can shoot some crates open.  One contains a portion of a Ms. Pac-Man cartridge (the pause/save password screen shows the status of some of these collections).  Another crate has some pizza, which I can eat and make Pac happier again.

Wait, cannibalism makes him happy?  The original Pac-Man shape was inspired, in part, by a pizza sans a couple of slices.

The last crate is, alas, haunted.  By that, I mean it has ghosts.

Using a power pellet, I supercharge and fly around and eat a couple of the ghosts, but I can’t get all 3 (This is automatic, by the way, I don’t have to do the flying myself)  .  I try restoring a few times, and approaching from different sides, but no change.

Walking past that crate again, I see eyes poking out of it, implying that there’s still a ghost in it.  If I repeat this, I get the third ghost, and he drops an ID card.  I’m not sure what I’ll need it for, but it’s in my inventory now.

Other cute things I can do on the screen is punch a hole in a sack of food (like flour or rice or something) and it spills out, causing a mouse to come out.  I can chase the mouse with the pellet gun.

There’s a computer thing here that I can try to use, but it doesn’t work, frustrating Pac-Man, making him angry.  My next step turned out to be shooting the pulley above the computer, because that moved a stone blocking the hole at the end of the cave.  This brings me out just to the left of the Rope-Way train station I arrived in, so I have truly come full-circle.

So I guess all there is to do now is to go up.  

At the top of the cliff is a sign guiding me, as it was, how to use something in the tree just next to me.

It’s a hang glider, and I need to knock it out of the tree and also knock a stone out of my way completely to use it.

I did not get many pictures during this flight, because it was hard to do that and fly at the same time.  But I had to rise and fall to avoid ghosts, rocks, cliffs, and many other obstacles.

Otherwise, I would become a ghost myself

Landing, I wedge my glider in a tree, so I drop down and explore a new section of jungle.  There’s vines that I can shoot down, and some of them drop items that make Pac-Man happy (like a rabbit) or sad (like a used apple core).  Happy Pac-Man continues on, and we find what we are looking for!

I’m not stuck here, though,  If I shoot down the last vine and pull on it, it opens a trap-door style hole in the ground.  Jumping down that, I land right next to the station.

I need to ride the train home, go past the farmer again, and then bring the flower home.

Of course, the evil ringleader wasn’t happy at the ghosts’ performance.

And that ends this post, so that next time I can help retrieve Junior’s guitar that was stolen from him.

Session Time: 2 hours 30 minutes

Total Time: 2 hours 30 minutes