Wah-Ca

[Jimmy_Milbury_Esq]

Pac-Man was a game you could beat. You could beat it by memorizing

patterns. The ghosts, you see, weren't programmed for randomness. If you

zigged and they zagged, they'd do the exact same thing in a similar

situation. It wasn't long before everybody knew the patterns to beat Pac-Man.

Ms. Pac-Man is a different story. The ghosts are programmed for

randomness, so there isn't a pattern that exists to beat it--the ghosts

behave differently in each game. But there is one technique that will earn

a player an incredible amount of points "Grouping." If you can induce the

ghosts to move close to one another, you can stay alive and get 1,600 points

when you gobble them near a power pill. This is the story of three guys from

Montana who got together and figured out how to give Ms. Pac-Man a beating

she'll never forget.

If Tom Asaki was hot in the summer of '82, it was due to the

temperature, not to his skill at Ms. Pac-Man. He was pretty good then, but he

wasn't grouping the ghosts yet. At least that's what Don Williams says, and

Don should know, since he regularly watched Tom play down at Games Are Fun in

Bozeman, Montana. Superior players usually can't put their techniques into

words. One way to get good is to watch a guy's moves. Don got pretty good at

Ms. Pac-Man too.

But Tom Asaki and Don Williams didn't really get tight until Spencer

Ouren, another Bozeman boy, started sharing his Ms. Pac-Man techniques.

Spencer knew Tom and introduced Don to Tom. From then on, whenever one of

them picked up a trick, he would share it with the other two. In January of

1983, they were not playing the game as individuals--beating Ms. Pac-Man had

become a group project. Their goal was to score the first- second- and third-

highest total scores ever recorded at the game. They felt that if they put

their heads together, they could come up with the best system to totally ace

out the rest of the world.

Grouping is not a mystery. It's a standard technique among better

Ms. Pac-Man players. The basic move is accomplished from the "hold" position

on the board. This is a spot that the ghosts will never cross to destroy you.

The hold is located in a different location on each of the four maze patterns

of the game. By moving out of this safe spot in varying directions, you can

influence the separate moving ghosts to get closer to one another in pursuit

of the faked direction you appear to be taking. Then gou can pop back into

the hold and the ghosts will be grouped in a tighter, more manageable pattern.

Grouping is pretty easy on the first three maze patterns (waves one

through nine). But even the best players always seemed to get wiped out on

the fourth maze pattern, called the "Junior" boards. The problem was that

there didn't seem to be a hold on the Junior boards. The other three holds

didn't work, and the Bozeman Think Tank, they called themselves, were

continually killed by the blue-green ghost. Without a hold on the fourth maze,

it would be impossible to conquer the game, because after the tenth wave half

the waves are Junior boards.

The Deception

When they had just about given up, a fellow by the name of Matt

Brass met up with the Think Tank. Brass, a pretty decent player himself, had

just returned from the North American Video Olympics in Ottumwa, Iowa. When

Brass described the Olympics scene to Tom, Spencer and Don, he dropped a

bombshell--some players were grouping the ghosts on the Junior boards.

It wasn't true. Brass wasn't lying--he had meant to say that some

players were grouping before the Junior boards.

But the Think Tank panicked. They thought they were pretty good at

Ms. Pac-Man. Now someone, some mysterious someone, had whipped the Junior

boards, which had seemed impossible.

Believing that the impossible was now possible (and had been

achieved), the Think Tank pressed on with their own solution. They thought,

"Well, if it's possible, we want to be able to do it too." It was like being

told that Mt. Everest had been scaled when it hadn't. The miscommunication

from Brass made the Think Tank believe grouping was possible on the Junior

boards. In fact, no one had ever done it.

They worked five days straight on the problem. The first thing they

did was to use the "rack advance" inside the Ms. Pac-Man cabinet to advance

the game to the higher boards. The found that if they just played the game

normally, by the time they worked their way to the higher boards, they became

reluctant to take any chances for fear of ruining a good score. And you don't

make any breakthroughs if you're not willing to take chances.

With a lot of research, the Think Tank, and especially Spencer,

decided that the key to grouping had to involve the four tunnels on the sides

of the screens. They started playing around in there, luring the ghosts on

wild goose chases to see how theg would respond. One ghost--Sue--seemed

particularly attracted to Ms. Pac-Man in the tunnels. Spencer discovered that

if the pink ghost is coming straight at you, you can deceive him by pointing

Ms. Pac-Man's eyes upward. The pink ghost, they found, has been programmed to

go in the same direction as you and to get in front of gou, even if there is

no channel to move. This information can be used for avoidance and grouping.

With these and other techniques, Spencer was soon using the tunnels and

grouping three of the ghosts. The other members of the Think Tank added

refinements.

It was Tom who made the breakthrough. By using Spencer's method to

group three ghosts, he discovered a hold! The hold, which didn't seem to

exist on the Junior boards, was there--but only if you grouped three of the

ghosts before you went into it. With this knowledge, it became a simple

matter of using the tunnels to group the three ghosts on the run, go into the

hold [see diagram] to wait for Sue, and then nail all of them. The Think Tank

was soon achieving scores in the 400,000 range, which had been considered

impossible.

You can imagine how Tom, Don and Spencer felt when they spoke with

Matt Brass again and discovered the communication breakdown. The Bozeman

Think Tank had done the impossible--only because theg mistakenly believed it

had already been achieved. Sometimes psychology can be just as important for

good scores as eye/hand coordination.

(This was a very basic sketch of a complex system worked out by the

Bozeman Three. The total system includes various fakes, patterns tn run, and

strategies to control the ghosts on all four mazes of the game. If you're

interested in the complete system for dominating Ms. Pac-Man, Spencer Ouren

will send it to you. Send $5 to cover his postage and sweat to: Spencer

Ouren, 1724 S. 19th St., Bozeman, MT 58705.)

Think Tank Tips

When you play a new game, watch other people play, then play the

game yourself, just getting used to the controls. Then try to master what

other people are doing on the game. Finally, try to invent new moves, new

solutions for situations. Don says to "look for a goal, something to do to

get through each board, then develop that skill and use it in the game."

According to Tom, you can get high scores in Ms. Pac-Man by using

lightning quick reflexes and open-field running. But keeping up that

intensity over an hour long game is impossible. You eventually slip. You

blink. It's better to explore "systems" of play if you really want to hit

high scores.

:thumbup:

[Booche]

you are the man Jimmy.

[peipunk]

That is stubborn, ultra nerdy, and right up my alley. I love it.

[dave-O]

Ms. Pac-Man was a sweet game.

[Velvet]

Three cheers.

[dancingbear]

hours a day at that game with about four other 'regulars' in undergrad. mmhh.

spencer

[Lazlo]

Hey Jimmy. Get some wet naps, pull up your gitch, put on your Darth Vader costume and tell your mom you won't be home for Scrabble and ice cream.