Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-Man Turbo hardware mods: Love em or hate em?

[cave hermit]

So I've been noticing for awhile now that whenever I see a pacman or ms pacman machine out in the wild, it's almost always equipped with a turbo mod that makes it so (Ms.) Pac-Man is twice as fast as the ghosts. Personally, I hate this mod, and it bothers me how it's near impossible to find a vanilla cabinet.

My beef with it is that I'm assuming the point of the turbo mod is to make the game feel more exciting and fast paced since the games start off quite slow, but for me I feel this backfires since being able to completely outrun the ghosts trivializes the early rounds of the game, and makes eating all 4 ghosts at once far easier.

But given how widespread this mod is, I can only assume I'm the exception, and that there are plenty of people out there who feel turbo mode enhances the games.

So what do you guys think? Do you like turbo mode? Do you hate it as well? Are you indifferent?

[BrianC]

Turbo can be fun to use, but I also prefer to play without it. I was disappointed when I played a multigame machine and Jr. Pac-Man was set to turbo. I like how some Ms. Pac-Man machines have a turbo button so it can be turned on and off, rather than being stuck with it. I like how the Genesis and NES versions of Ms. Pac-Man can be played with turbo on or off and has extra difficulty levels to compensate.

[SuperGrafx]

While I tend to be a purist, I don't mind the occasional round of Pac-Man with Turbo. Adds another element to the game.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

I recall going to the Modesto, CA based local arcade hangout called Cals-R-Cade back in the mid-1980s. They had a modified Pac-Man game that instead of showing the usual Namco sprites, all the ghosts were replaced with firemen and the Pac-man character was a ball of fire. Upon eating a power pill, the firemen automatically changed into a pack of cigarettes. I thought that was a bit different and cool to play it back in the day. Not something you'd see everyday, especially at an arcade.

I do recall seeing/playing an original Ms. Pac-Man cab with an added aftermarket turbo mod back in the mid-1980s. By pressing the yellow button located to the right of the 4-way digital joystick, it'd speed up the entire game and not only would Ms. Pac-Man's speed be increased, the ghosts' speed was sped up as well. Talk about a double whammy/double-edged sword right there, folks (the game's difficultly factor greatly increased every time the player pressed the turbo button).

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I was at a party once where there was a MAME cab running Ms. Pac Man and he complained how it was never emulated properly because Ms. Pac Man wasn't moving fast enough. I showed him video of a turbo mod and told him that he was probably playing a turbo version, but said that the turbo looked closer to the 'right' speed and insisted MAME's emulated the original innaccurately.

[eckart]

Like it in the original speed. At gets faster later, thats ok.
Playing on the Pac-Man 25th Anniversary cab. You can setup a speed mode in the setup.

Sorry for the off topic..
Do somebody know how good the emulation from this Namco Anniversary Cabs are?
I had it i guess two times that ms. pac man didnt die after hitting a ghost.
Guess you didnt find that in the original midway pcb version.

[brentsg]

Like it in the original speed. At gets faster later, thats ok.
Playing on the Pac-Man 25th Anniversary cab. You can setup a speed mode in the setup.

Sorry for the off topic..
Do somebody know how good the emulation from this Namco Anniversary Cabs are?
I had it i guess two times that ms. pac man didnt die after hitting a ghost.
Guess you didnt find that in the original midway pcb version.

I am not certain about Ms. Pac, but the original Pac had situations where you could pass thru a monster/ghost. I used to know some patterns that exploited this and it was repeatable. Unfortunately the 25th Anniversary cab doesn't retain separate high scores for the high speed modes. I rarely use them b/c scores are always better and it overwrites my legit scores.

[BrianC]

If I remember correctly, I have passed through ghosts a couple times on an original arcade Ms. Pac-Man. I remember hearing that it's possible, as well.

[e_tank]

in both pac-man and ms pac-man collisions are checked per tile and only after (or before? can't remember, but it doesn't matter as the result is the same..) all objects have been moved. thus missed collisions (tunnelling) can happen if the player and a ghost are moving directly towards one another and switch tiles on the same frame.

iirc these turbo mods don't increase your chances of tunnelling thru ghosts as they simply call the main stepping function multiple times (which includes collision checking) to increase the game's speed.

[eckart]

Thanks for the info!
So the anniversary pcb versions are close to the original you would say?

Also had this issue one time, not sure it was pac man or ms pac man.
A safespot at the top right area. All ghosts move around the prison in the middle.
Watch that about a minute or so. Not sure if this is also common.

[e_tank]

@eckart: safe spots are def part of the originals. in pac-man there's one close to where you spawn, if you sit there facing up most the ghosts will just loop around the jail indefinitely (provided the ghosts have used up all their scatter turns).

my guess would be they're essentially identical in terms of game logic. if these games are emulated via software / hardware (which they probably are) then inaccurate emulation, particularly of older hardware, rarely has a direct affect on game logic. if they're ports, well if it's not 100% accurate it prob would be very close to it. ms./pac-man, like tetris, are very simple games in terms of the logic that drives them. add to the fact that pretty much every minute detail about said logic has been documented very thoroughly over the years, it doesn't take a huge effort from even a moderately skilled programmer to produce a version that plays 99% identical to the originals.

again, that's just my guess. if you google enough i'm sure you could find out exactly how accurate these versions are.

[eckart]

Thanks, e_tank!
Guess i only scratch the surface on this two games.
Still not over 50.000 point. But in speed mode it was nearly 100.000.

[Jeneki]

Growing up at the time, that mod was so widespread I thought that's the way it just was.

[BrianC]

Growing up at the time, that mod was so widespread I thought that's the way it just was.

One guy I meant growing up thought the Hangly Man hack of Pac-Man was the way the game was since most of the original Pac-Mans near me were hacks growing up. Oddly enough, I saw Ms. Pac-Man more than Pac-Man growing up and most were the original without the speed up hack.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

If you watched the demo runs on an original Bally Midway MFG Co. manufactured Ms. Pac-Man cab (non-turbo version), there'd be times when the Ms. would pass right through a ghost. How is this possible? Only if the eyes of any ghost are looking in any direction but not directly at the Ms. or even ol' Pac-Man himself, would passing through a ghost be feasible/possible. That's all there is to it, folks. (This trick even works on the Google flash game of Pac-Man hailing from 2010 as well but in reality, is much harder to execute properly and survive unscathed.)

In those old Pac-Man & Ms. Pac-Man strategy guides from the early 1980s, there'd be patterns that you could do and at some key points, you'd pass through a ghost.

On those 20th Anniversary Editions of "Class of 1981" with Galaga & Ms. Pac-Man Jamma PCB conversion kits, I recall that you could continue your last game played with your score intact provided that you inserted a credit and started it before the countdown timer reached zero. I tried to see if I could get past the 800,000+ point milestone but eventually, the score would reset back to zero upon reaching a certain score threshold -- so I gave up on seeing if it was possible to get a million or more on the 20th Anniversary Edition of Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga (learned my lesson the hard way). It was certainly dissapointing to learn all that time spent getting into the high six-figure score range to see it all vanish in an instant -- it's a given in this day of age. Oh well, at least I tried.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[brentsg]

IOn those 20th Anniversary Editions of "Class of 1981" with Galaga & Ms. Pac-Man Jamma PCB conversion kits, I recall that you could continue your last game played with your score intact provided that you inserted a credit and started it before the countdown timer reached zero.

That's not default behavior and I've not come across one setup like that. There is a test menu called "General Adjusts" and it allows you to enable "buy in" and select how many coins are required to do this. Only savages would use this, obviously.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Well, that particular Class of 1981 cab at my local Boomers is exactly setup like that with scoring intact if you do decide to continue upon your last life expiring with turbo powered endowed Ms. Pac-Man. Yep, it's a strange & unusual oddity to find at an arcade even today. The only issue is on the higher boards/levels, the overall speed of the ghosts is outright insane and the life expectancy of a lowly power pill ain't worth chasing a ghost (due to how small the window frame/time actually is when trying to eat one quickly enough before it reverts back to the usual dangerous pastel color of instant death).

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~