Atari Emulator -> Anthony Ku's Mr. M

Coulda sworn I did this one already! Guess not. Of course, it is kind of tricky to do a text search for a phrase like "Mr. M." Spoiler Alert: we never do find out what the "M" in "Mr. M" stands for, but judging from the "plot description" of the game... mastication? Munch? Munchies? Massive appetite? A brief search at thesaurus.com (bet THAT site name cost someone a pretty penny!) quickly reveals that a single word starting with "m" is just not enough to convey the madness behind this slight twist on that old gaming trope, Pac-Man. Things were so much simpler back then, until it briefly tried to join forces with pinball. But Mr. Ku's variation adds some fine complications to the Pac-Man legend. For instance: what if the game board isn't strictly a maze that fills each corner of the board? And what if it's not completely full of dots? Alas, there's no goodies to eat here, like cherries and metal keys. And why does Pac-Man never have to stop and... you know, take a shi... I mean, a Number Two? You would think... and why is there no facility where Pac-Man has to run to as fast as he can before making a mess in his pants? And why does Pac-Man not wear pants to begin with? ...what else? I must be forgetting something. Oh, right. Unlike most Atari games, Mr. M features a nice summary of your goal in the game on the title screen. There are no fancy options: no second player, no progressive levels of difficulty, just jump right into the deep end of this pool and get cracking. Also, Pac-Man doesn't have a "hunger" deadline to meet when getting those last few dots in the corner that you should've gotten a while ago. The programmers figured, and figured rightly, that struggling with the four ghosts would be challenge enough.
Speaking of which, on the plus side, you don't have four ghosts constantly following you(r ass) in "Mr. M." No, you get enemies that come flying in from the left and right sidelines. If you're lucky, and NOT FULL, having to make a beeline for the game's many toilets... sometimes you can even eat the bad guys that fly at you. But be careful! You have to line yourself up just right; if you've got baddies flying in from the left at your head, you'll soon have baddies flying in from the right at your feet, and they'll getcha! And like all of the great games, with each new level comes a new responsibility. Level 2, well... you have to learn to duck and walk at the same time. Alas, you can't do three things at once, so you have to unduck yourself to get at the food in a tight corner. Level 3 features one-way ramps and warps that take you from the right side of the screen to the left... I'll let you struggle with that one. Level 4 features radioactive walls; love those. Level 5 is kind of a bonus round, which is good, because Level 6 is pretty wicked in its design. I forgot how tough it was! Had to use Saved States to finally solve it, and just barely at that. Basically, Level 6 requires you to do some critical thinking and planning, timing your rapid hunger just right so that you don't starve so quickly to death. And like all the greats... the only other one I can think of off the top is Dark Star... you leave the fans hungering for more. In this case, we only get a brief glimpse of Level 7, and then it's right back to Level 1. It's an okay game; its strength is in its playability, but... I wouldn't try to flip the score on this one. What can I say?

Atarimania's home for Mr. M
Mushca (AKA Homesoft) Disk 30