Pac & Pal - New Feature

New Feature

Another new feature for a Pac-Man game (besides Miru) is a shooting capability. Instead of having energizers, two of the collectible items were the level's particular bonus symbol, which line up at the bottom of the screen as each new level is reached. The first two are the flagship from Galaxian. Later symbols included a red car from Rally-X, a trumpet, a snowman, and even another Pac-Man. When Pac-Man eats these, instead of the ghosts turning blue, he turns blue, and momentarily has the power to shoot a ray, smoke, musical notes, freezing rays and little Pac-Man at the ghosts (who turn purple and sometimes blue, depending on the item used to stun them). This stuns them and yields the familiar point value of 200, 400, 800, and 1600 for each ghost shot. While ghosts are stunned, Pac-Man can pass right through them. If the stunning effect wears off before the ray-shooting ability wears off, Pac-Man can shoot the ghost again for another 1,600 points. The point values carry over when Pac-Man eats the other bonus symbol before the effect wears off.

Every few levels have a bonus round with the maze containing only cards that yield an increasing number of points, until the player flips over a card with Blinky under it. At that point, the round is over, but no lives are lost. Each level also has a simple musical background, unlike the other Pac-Man games before it.