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jrpacman: MAME ROM Information.

History:

Jr. Pac-Man (c) 1983 Bally Midway.

One of many sequels to the legendary "Pac-Man", Jr. Pac-Man features the character of Pac-Man's son. For the first time in the series' history, side-scrolling mazes were introduced, with each maze being two screens wide.

This time, the mazes have no exit tunnels through which players can make an escape. The bonus items that appear move around the maze and are now something of a mixed blessing, as not only will they destroy any Power Pills they come across, but they will also turn any normal dots they pass over into large dots that slow the player's movements considerably, but are worth more points than normal dots if eaten by the player. Any mutated dots in the maze will disappear if the player loses a life.

The Pac-Man character is once again pursued by four ghosts (Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Tim) in his quest to eat all of the dots in each maze. And as before, numerous Power Pills litter the mazes that, when eaten, allow Jr. to eat the pursuing ghosts.

As with previous "Pac-Man" games, intermissions are featured between certain levels. Jr. Pac-Man's intermissions are episodic in nature, like those found in Ms. Pac-Man. Jr. Pac-Man's story tells of the blossoming love between a Pac-Man and a small ghost named Yum-Yum.

Act I - Jr. Meets Yum-Yum : Jr. Pac-Man steps outside his home to play. He spots Yum-Yum beyond the fence in his yard and goes outside to meet her. Blinky, hiding in the shadows, comes out from hiding to catch Jr. However Ms. Pac-Man, keeping a watchful eye over her child, sees the commotion from her window and runs out to the yard to eat a Power Pill and chase both ghosts away while Jr. returns to the safety of home. This intermission is played after Round 1.

Act II - The Gift : It seems that Jr. can't get the enchanting young ghost out of his mind, so he proceeds to bring a balloon to her as a gift the next day. Excited to see her, he meets her on a bridge and hands her the balloon, when we catch a glimpse of Blinky lurking behind a bush. This intermission is played after Round 3.

Act III - They Escape : Blinky moves from one bush to the another, startling Yum-Yum into releasing the balloon. Blinky attempts to capture Jr. once and for all, but once again, Ms. Pac-Man comes to the rescue. Blinky chases her off to the left, while Jr. Pac-Man and Yum-Yum escape to the right. Once alone, they gaze in to each other's eyes and fall in love, with hearts appearing all around them. This intermission is played after Rounds 5, 7, and 9.

- TECHNICAL -

[Game No. 0A29]

Game was available either as one of 2 kits to update a "Pac-Man" upright cabinet or cocktail table cabinet. It was also available as a dedicated game using a "Mappy"-style cabinet.

Main CPU : Z80 (@ 3.072 Mhz)

Sound Chips : Namco 3-channel WSG (@ 96 Khz)

Screen orientation : Vertical

Video resolution : 224 x 288 pixels

Screen refresh : 60.61 Hz

Palette colors : 16

Players : 2

Control : 4-way joystick

- TRIVIA -

Released in October 1983.

Jr. Pac-Man was developed by 'General Computer Corporation' (GCC) for Bally/Midway and is essentially an enhancement to "Ms. Pac-Man" (which is, in itself, an enhanced version of the original "Pac-Man"). Much of the original "Pac-Man" code is still present and even the 'GENERAL COMPUTER CORPORATION Hello, Nakamura.' message that featured in "Ms. Pac-Man" is present.

Jr. Pac-Man runs on a modified "Pac-Man" hardware, with additional horizontal scrolling support. This was the first "Pac-Man" game in which the maze is larger than the visible area; requiring the screen to scroll.

There are a number of hidden bonus objects that were never used by the developers. To see them, set 'CHEATS' to 'Always have blue ghosts'; play a game, repeatedly eat the ghosts until you get past 1600 points. The game was coded to deal with such high bonus values and assigns a hexadecimal value to the score value after 1600. The hexadecimal scores equate to a graphic in the game. After eating somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-30 ghosts consecutively, the hidden objects will appear. There is a rattle, a baby's dummy, a cowboy hat and a skateboard.

Abner Ashman holds the official record for this game with 1, 500, 000 points on February 2, 2002. In the game where he "officially" got this record, there was a power outage that shut down his game at approximately that score... and he still had not lost a man up to that point!

A bootleg of this game runs on the "Pengo" hardware.

A Jr. Pac-Man unit appears in the 1983 movie 'Joysticks'.

- SCORING -

Dot : 10 points.

Mutated Dot : 50 points.

Powerpill : 50 points.

Ghosts : 200, 400, 800 and 1,600 points.

Cycle : 100 points.

Kite : 200 points.

Drum : 500 points.

Balloon : 700 points.

Train : 1,000 points.

Cat : 2,000 points.

Beer! : 5,000 points.

- TIPS AND TRICKS -

MAZE STRATEGY

The 1st maze, which has 548 dots and 6 Power Pills, offers a good mix of straight-a-ways and islands. The two power pills on either side of the ghosts' den cannot be destroyed by bonuses, so try to save them for later in the stage. The ghosts move slow enough that you can plan out your strategy and wait by power pills for ghosts to gather nearby before eating them.

The 2nd maze has 560 dots, 6 Power Pills, and features more long stretches than the first maze, but there are many escape routes, so you shouldn't worry about getting trapped. Use the 'staircase' section of the maze on the far ends to put distance between you and any trailing ghosts. It's possible to 'trap' the ghosts so that you can complete a lot of the maze without them chasing you. Position Jr. to either the far left or far right hand side of the maze; thus causing the center of the maze to scroll off-screen. You should see the ghosts in the corridors above the ghosts' den; they will stay in those corridors as long as you are on either the left or right hand side of the maze. This works because the game has logic to reverse the ghosts' direction when they go off screen.

The 3rd maze has 526 dots, 6 Power Pills, and features small circular sections that you should approach with caution. It can be hard to read which directions the ghosts will move in around them and lead to unavoidable collisions. By this maze, the ghosts are speeding up, so take the time to cross from one section of the maze to the other to prevent the ghosts from surrounding you.

The 4th maze has 526 dots and 6 Power Pills, and features islands on the bottom that can be both helpful and harmful. They allow you multiple paths to take in order to escape from one ghost, but they also provide multiple pathways for a number of ghosts to surround you. Clear as much of the bottom sections as you can before you eat the Power Pill. Then use the Pill and eat any ghost in the area before time runs out. Then finish the section if possible before moving on.

The 5th maze has 528 dots and 6 Power Pills, and features islands that are scattered throughout. Cross back and forth across the entire maze to prevent the ghosts from ganging up on you in any one section of the maze. Power pills are becoming less effective at this point. Don't sacrifice yourself trying to stop a bonus item from destroying a power pill.

The 6th maze has many S-turns that offer the ghosts multiple opportunities to trap you from either end. Keep the ghosts behind you by crossing back and forth. To make matters worse, you only get 4 Power Pills instead of 6. Aside from the Power Pills, there are a total of 512 dots in this maze. Don't let the bonus item transform too many of the dots into mutated dots in this maze, or you will have a harder time avoiding ghosts while being slowed down by the large dots.

The 7th and final maze is by far the most dangerous maze to Jr.'s survival. The center is relatively safe, but the sides of the maze are deadly. There are 540 dots and only 4 Power Pills in this maze. The Power Pills are situated in odd corners. The far path around the outside of the maze is considerably dangerous as it is easy to get trapped trying to clear it. And the Power Pills simply aren't effective long enough to keep you safe. The smaller sections between the side Power Pills is also easy to become trapped in. Only enter if the coast looks clear, and make sure that you have an exit strategy if a ghost decides to enter this small section with you. For all of your planning, success in this maze depends on a considerable amount of luck.

After you finish the 7th maze, the mazes cycle from the 4th through the 7th in a repeating loop.

- SERIES -

1. Pac-Man (1980)

2. Ms. Pac-Man (1981)

3. Super Pac-Man (1982)

4. Pac-Man Plus (1982)

5. Jr. Pac-Man (1983)

6. Pac & Pal (1983)

7. Pac-Land (1984)

8. Pac-Mania (1987)

9. Pac-In-Time (1994, Nintendo SNES)

10. Pac-Man 2 - The New Adventures (1994, Nintendo SNES, Sega Mega Drive)

11. Pac-Man VR (1996)

12. Pac-Man World (1999, Sony PlayStation)

13. Pac-Man - Adventures in Time (2000, PC CD-ROM)

14. Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness (2000, Sony PlayStation)

15. Ms. Pac-Man - Quest for the Golden Maze (2001, PC CD-ROM)

16. Pac-Man All-Stars (2002, PC CD-ROM)

17. Pac-Man Fever (2002, Sony PS2)

18. Pac-Man World 2 (2002, Sony PS2, Nintendo GameCube, and Microsoft XBOX; 2004, PC CD-ROM)

19. Pac-Man vs. (2003, Nintendo GameCube)

20. Ms. Pac-Man - Maze Madness (2004, Nintendo GameBoy Advance)

21. Pac-Man World 3 (2005, Sony PSP, Sony PS2, Nintendo GameCube, Microsoft XBOX, PC CD-ROM, Nintendo DS)

22. Pac'n Roll (2005, Nintendo DS)

23. Pac-Pix (2005, Nintendo DS)

24. Pac-Man Championship Edition (2007, Xbox Live)

25. Pac-Man Championship Edition DX (2010, Xbox Live & PSN)

26. Pac-Man Battle Royale (2010)

- PORTS -

* Consoles :

Atari 2600 (1984)

Atari 7800 (unreleased prototype)

* Computers :

Commodore C64 (1988)

PC [MS-DOS] (1988)

- SOURCES -

Game's rom.

Machine's picture.

MAME Info:

0.24 [Nicola Salmoria, David Caldwell]

Artwork available

WIP:

- 0.142: hap fixed pac-man and the ghosts are not visable in Jr. Pac-Man and clone (Pengo hardware).

- 0.139u1: Atari Ace removed global variables from NAMCO sound core.

- 0.138u1: Tafoid added DIP locations to Jr. Pac-Man and clones.

- 0.130u2: Fabio Priuli fixed inputs perform wrong in-game function in clone Jr. Pac-Man (Pengo hardware).

- 0.115u4: Lord Nightmare fixed Jr. Pac-Man to explicitly use the SN76489 now that it behaves differently from the SN76496. Changed palettesize to 512 colors.

- 26th November 2006: Mr. Do - The current Jr. Pac-Man has been replaced, thanks to fine vectorizations by Zorg and to the loan by Vintage Arcade Superstore.

- 26th August 2006: Mr. Do - Added Jr. Pac-Man bezel from MAME.net and Mean Arena. Some of these decent stuff are so-so; some are REALLY good.

- 0.93: Added clock parameter to Namco sound (96000 Hz).

- 0.90u4: Changed description of clone '(bootleg?)' to '(Pengo hardware)'. Changed region gfx2 to gfx1 ($2000) and fixed proms loading.

- 0.89u3: MASH moved Jr. Pac-Man (Pengo hardware) to the jrpacman driver - Game now playable. Changed description of clone 'Jr. Pac-Man (Pengo hardware)' to 'Jr. Pac-Man (bootleg?)'.

- 0.88u3: Aaron Giles cleaned up the Jr Pacman driver. Removed 'Increase Game Speed (Cheat)' dipswitch.

- 0.37b12: Changed VSync to 60.606060Hz.

- 0.37b3: Added new sound proms and other (timing, palette low/high bits and color lookup table).

- 14th May 2000: Guru - Dumped Junior Pacman with all the needed proms.

- 0.36b12: Added new sound prom (pacman.spr)

- 0.35b13: Changed description to 'Jr. Pac-Man'.

- 0.34b1: Added sound and color proms ($0, 20, 40 - palette low and high bits, color lookup table).

- 0.25: Added JrPacman speed cheat. It works in the same way of Pacman (thanks to Hugo Pi for let me notice this) [Mirko Buffoni]. Added high score saving to Junior Pacman. Control: CTRL = Enable speed cheat.

- 0.24: Nicola Salmoria added Jr. Pac Man (Bally Midway 1983). Decryption method provided by David Caldwell. Colors should be 100% right too. Hiscore saving not supported yet. Nicola also thanks Lee Taylor for help. The encryption PALs garble bots 0, 2 and 7 of the ROMs. The encryption scheme is complex (basically it's a state machine) and can only be faithfully emulated at run time. To avoid the performance it that would cause, here we have a table of the values which must be XORed with each memory region to obtain the decrypted bytes. Game is playable with accurate colors and sound. Control: Arrows = Move around, F1 = Skip level and F2 = Test mode. Known issues: Maybe decryption is not correct yet. For example in the third intermission the background is quite black and a line appear on left. I'm not sure about this. I don't know what a dip switch does.

LEVELS: 7 (endless)

Other Emulators:

* JEmu

* HiVE

* VAntAGE

Recommended Games (Maze Pac-Man):

Pac-Man / PuckMan

Namco Classic Collection Vol.2 (Pac-Man)

Pac-Man - 25th Anniversary Edition

Pac-Man Plus

Super Pac-Man

Pac & Pal

Pac-Mania

4 Fun in 1 (Ghost Muncher)

unknown Pac-Man gambling game

Ghostmuncher Galaxian (bootleg)

Ms. Pac-Man

Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga - 20th Anniversary Class of 1981 Reunion

Pac-Man - 25th Anniversary Edition (Ms. Pac-Man)

Jr. Pac-Man

Hyper Pacman

XESS - The New Revolution (Hyper Pacman)

Twinkle

Funny Strip

Puckman Pockimon

-

Professor PacMan

Pac-Land

Pac-Land (United Amusements PC Engine)

Puzzle Club

Pac-Slot

Romset: 58 kb / 12 files / 27.7 zip

MAME XML Output:

<manufacturer>Bally Midway</manufacturer>

</input>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</game>

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