Pac-Man 2 - Won!

Written by Michael

Not how my mother taught me to greet others in polite company.

We’ve played through three of the four levels in this game so far.  Perhaps it's time to finish this off?

Is he related to Uncle Pennybags?

After restoring Junior’s guitar, dad sits in his bean bag chair and turns on the television.  Before we discuss his viewing habits, let’s just take a moment to check out this room, now that the rest of the family isn’t blocking our view.  First, inside the house shaped like Pac-Man is a table shaped like Pac-Man.

How many of you have human-shaped tables?  30 bonus CAPs to anyone who sends in a picture of themselves standing next to their family’s human-shaped table. 20 extra CAPs if a computer with the TAG blog is visible in the picture.  (No cheating with AI, please.)

A glance out the back window shows a house that should belong to Ms. Pac-Man.  But, wait... we aren’t living with our wife?

Pac-Man is a product of the 80s, not the 60s...

Sadly, the clock does not show accurate time.  I checked, but then I remembered that an SNES would not have had the current date & time set.  And I also wonder what music was playing on that somewhat compact boom box behind him.

Okay, I’ve digressed too much.  Back to the game, where dad sees something disturbing on TV.

A classic English-language joke amongst kids...

...and they explain it, just in case you don’t get it.

And then, the Ghost Witch breaks into the coverage to make a special call-out to us.

And then tells us that she’s setting a Gum Monster loose and we’ll get munched for sure.

He’s got a mission.  We go back to the city, the same train stop.  This time, when I stumble past the advertisement painter, there’s a bucket on a pulley that I can’t avoid, and it lifts us up to the rooftops again.

I’ll save you the walkthrough of this, because it’s pretty much the same as before.  Except, this time I have to eat some ghosts and they drop another ID card.  I guess we’ll need it to enter something.

After getting back down from the skyline, using the same loose girder as the last post, I explore more of the city street.  There’s a fire hydrant that’s spraying water.  If Pac-Man is in a decent mood, he’ll just turn the hydrant off.  But if he’s pissed off, he goes postal on it, and gets so fed up he wraps it in some kind of tape or bandage.  It causes water pressure to build up, and blow the manhole cover off from nearby.  Predictably, it hits our boy and dazes him a little.

Much like Michaelangelo, we’re in search of some pizza.

So, it’s time to make like a turtle and go underground to the sewers.  At least, just for a screen or so, and then we climb back up into the factory.

Yes, I’m pretty sure I just found the easiest way into the factory. So, from an adventure point of view, I’m glad I avoided a lot of arcade stuff.

It’s... bacon!

Hey, look!  Ghosts!  Chomp a pellet and eat ghosts.  Sounds like a plan.  

To use modern teen parlance, these ghosts are cooked.

On the wall nearby are frying pans for each ghost.  I’m not too sure why a factory worker would need to keep individual ones handy, although back in the 60s, offices sometimes used to have racks of coffee cups like that.  With the introduction of styrofoam and paper cups, the reusable ones disappeared much like our ozone layer.

Clearing these pans shows the numbers 4, 5, and 1 behind the right-most 3 pans.  Must be a password to something.

I pass down the conveyer belt and cannot avoid being processed by one of the machines, which molds me into a ghost.  

It gets me past a security beacon that senses intruders.  But then I also become the object of infatuation for an unwanted partner.

Dude, I’m married! 

Let’s try this a different way next time.  As Pac-Man, I figure out how to use that hook this time, and do some Tarzan moves past the machine.  I then shoot the security beacon and knock it out, so I can pass.

Off to the Biochemical Lab, where we pass by a lot of tubes and vessels that remind me of the cold storage in Gabriel Knight.  There’s some test tubes and beakers I can shoot.

Please, don’t shoot me.

One of the beakers even has a power pellet inside!

There’s another security beam, but this time Pac easily jumps over it.

Even more computers and beakers, and if you shoot the wrong ones, things go boom and you go bloop-bloop-bloop.  Best we just ignore them.

The space after the 3 would have made their construction go over budget.

We come across some kind of door with five numbered slots and instructions to insert 3 cards.  Shooting the numbers we saw on the “kitchen” wall causes us to insert the ID cards into those slots, and the door opens.  

Inside is the gum monster, with the ghost witch behind the scenes watching the show.  Two of the ghosts press buttons on the machines to feed more gum to the monster, causing him to grow, very much like a collection of used gum deposited underneath a school desk.

So the way to beat him is to constantly shoot him, so he’s going down faster than the ghosts can feed him, and also distracting him from Pac-Man so he doesn’t grab him out of the sky as he flies across the screen, avoiding contact.

Please excuse this image quality, I did not get a screenshot of this so I took it from an online video.

Eventually, we win, and the ghost witch grumbles about how she’ll be back.  Then the kids in town grumble about how they didn’t get their gum back.

In other words, everyone is happy.  We even get a big smooch from Ms. Pac-Man.

Back for scoring next time!

Session Time: 1 hour 45 minutes

Total Time: 5 hours 30 minutes