Intro:

    Coming of age in the 80's for me, was full of bandana's around our legs with our jeans tightly cuffed, and rolled up. It was also lots of big hair, Michael Jackson pleather pants, which I never owned, and other things that you can see in any 80's movie, or may have experienced yourself. One thing also about the 80's was the explosion of video games. Most of which happened in arcades, which are dead as far as I'm concerned, and gone, but not forgotten, home video game systems. I have fond memories of pumping quarter after quarter in the guzzling machines. Now, with 20 bucks, your TV, and some AA batteries, you can relive Ms. Pac-Man, Pole Position, Galaga, Mappy, and even one of my favorites, Xevious at home. Is all good for this release of JAKKS Pacific's Ms. Pac-Man 5 in 1 TV Games? Read on to find out...

The Packaging:

    Donning nice colors in its retail box, this 5 in 1 games package clearly focuses on Ms. Pac-Man as a selling point. To be honest, it is my favorite "Pac-Man" game, and one of the main reasons I bought this. High on the list also is Xevious, and Galaga. I was looking forward for a trip down memory lane, without spending my hard earned quarters this time around.

(1) Front of the box	(2) Back of the box

The instructions and such:

    After cutting loads of tape with a razor blade, I fumbled open the package. Below is the papers that were included. One was an 'in general tips and instructions' paper for getting your TV Games ready to rumble. There is also a warranty card, and an overview about the back story, and what to do in the games, and how to control them.

(3) Papers inside

The Unit:

    Somewhat mimicking an arcade game, you see the ball type joystick present in arcade games, and two buttons on the unit. On the lower front of the unit is the On/Off button. A reset button if things get too weird for some reason? And a menu button. The Menu button actually has many uses. When you press it in a game, you effectively pause your action. You can quit the game and go back to the menu in which you select which one of the aforementioned 5 games you want to play, or you can continue playing after the phone rings, your cat starts hacking up a hairball, or whatever you would need to take care of, that would cause you to interrupt your playing.

(4) The unit	(5) Close up	(6) On/Off, Reset, Menu

The battery compartment:

    Ok, someone was very, very proud of the steering in Pole Position. Taped around the battery compartment is the "awesome" controls for Pole Position, if you didn't actually read through the manual for the game briefly. Unscrewing the Phillips screw, which has a nice plastic washer in it, to keep it in the back plastic of the unit, reveals the 4 AA battery requirements which of course are on the box. You wouldn't really care if there was a plastic washer in the screw casing, unless you managed to drop in among a dark area, or plush carpet. But rest assured, that was thought of whether purposely, or "let's put a washer here" type thinking in R&D.

(7) Pole Position Controls, and battery compartment	(8) Battery compartment

Ready to go:

    All you need now, after you insert your batteries, and screw back in the battery compartment plate is a TV, or some other composite source, such as the back of your Mini-van, your LCD, VCR, and so forth.

(9) Hook to TV, or composite source, and go (This time the advertising is free, Sony)

Game shots - Courtesy of JAKKS Pacific Website:

    The games are of course in low resolution, well, they have to be to be on your TV Screen. While they are slightly blurry, that is to be expected because most of these games were in the arcades at least 25 years ago. Graphics were pretty bad back then. Just about anyone could be an artist for game design. The sprites were maybe 32x32 pixels then, at most. I'll leave you with the game shots for now. I may revisit them later because Xevious is a bad shot from the TV Games website. None of them get bigger, so don't bother to click on them, unlike our usual style here.

Ms. Pac-Man	Galaga

Xevious	Mappy

Pole Position

The controls on each game:

 Ms. Pac-Man:

    The pinnacle selling point for this unit is undoubtedly Ms. Pac-man. It's clearly portrayed on the packaging. Unfortunately, this is the lowest point of all the games. The controls are totally borked. Screwed. Retarded. Unresponsive. Flakey. Need I go on? I didn't think so. Everything I have tried to get Ms. Pac-Man to move how I wanted more than 85% of the time was a waste of time. I'd turn down a corridor unwillingly on my part, or miss where I wanted to turn to next. Personally, I think the controller, or the game is just plain screwed. My guess is the joystick. After being as careful with my $20 dollar purchase, I gave it a bit more push. The joystick, clearly went in all four directions with some resistance. I found out with just a bit more push, the joystick would click, and move ever so slightly more in that direction. Using some finesse and not trying to force any direction would work better. But as is, one of the most wanted games in my book, was not enjoyable at all when your character regularly doesn't do what you want, when you want. It's a good thing I bought 3 of these things, and sent two away as Xmas gifts huh? Looking up reviews on the net, it seems that this is a common problem, and some don't have it at all. It sounds to me like a recall should be made to all of us that the controls don't work correctly huh? I guess I should have done my research, but having great luck and major enjoyment with two other JAKKS Pacific TV Games, I thought, how could they mess it up?


 Galaga:

    A very popular arcade game was Galaga. I did play it, but not as much as other games. One of my complaints, was that you could only have two shots on the screen at a time. It's of course better than Galaxian, in which you can have a whole one shot on the screen, it was/is annoying. Also I thought your dang ship was way too large to effectively dodge bullets. This version is true to the arcade version, the controls work well, and other than your hand getting sore after a few minutes of gaming, hitting that large fire button, it is enjoyable. JAKKS sure didn't think about ergonomics at all here. I can just imagine how it's going to tear up a 6 year olds hands...


 Xevious:

    An arcade favorite of mine, I hadn't played this in probably 7 years. There is an arcade version emulation, or whatever floating around on the PC, but it isn't very friendly on modern OS's. Trust me on that one. Unless it has been updated, we are out of luck except for the JAKKS emulation of Xevious. As to all of these games in this bundle, I'm not sure if they are the full arcade games, or pretty faithful reproductions. I'm struggling to remember, but I think Ms. Pac-Man at least had better graphics. Or maybe it's just cause they are on a big TV, and not some 19" CRT that eventually got burned in, in the arcade machines.

    The controls are responsive, unfortunately the placement of the small button, which you use to 'bomb' land targets is somewhat hard to hit. Holding down the button yields your autofire for the 'air' targets, but as I remember, I think? You couldn't have both down at the same time in the arcade version. Regardless, the 'bomb' button is a bit hard to hit with its placement. I can't really come up with a better idea at this moment in time, so I guess neither did the developers as well.


 Mappy:

    I'd have to honestly say, I've never played this, or remembered it in the arcade. Maybe a trampoline jumping mouse, outwitting cats in 32 colors wasn't my kind of style. Then again, I remember Space Zap, and that version I plated was in black and white. But anyway, it is a fun game, once you learn the tricks. Not as fun as some games, but ah, to each is own right? At least the controls are responsive to user input in this game.



 Pole Position:

    Actually, the twist steering is better than the arcade I think. Or maybe it was me playing too much Sinistar, than trying to race after. I dunno. Maybe the arcade version just go too fast for me, but without a doubt, the twist control is very responsive, yet even as such, Pole Position is a short game unless you are very good at it. With practice, I'm sure I can be. I'm betting my reflexes were better when I was an early teen, than they are now, but this control scheme is rightly bragged about. Kudos on that one. It still won't make up for Ms. Pac-Man though. Not by a long shot.


Summary:

    Although the controls in 4 out of 5 games is excellent, I just can't understand the obvious 'dropping of the ball' in Ms. Pac-Man. If you hadn't caught my negative energy thus far, let me give you this analogy. Ms. Pac-Man is as fun to play as this: High School party in a basement, dead of winter in the upper Midwest. "Dude, if you drink all that Captain Morgan's, you'll end up sleeping on the basement cement floor." "Nah, no I won't." Well, let me tell you, I woke up the next day face down on the cold cement basement floor. That is how much fun Ms. Pac-Man is.

    While I thought of rating each of the games at 20% each. 5x20% = 100% score, Ms. Pac-Man is just plain screwed up. An 80% score does not do this justice. Think of it as paying 4 bucks a piece for each game, add in your batteries, frustration, and just really getting ripped off 4 bucks. Nothing to some, but I can imagine the 14 year old with an allowance of $20 per week that bought this. This is bad news for JAKKS Pacific. Or maybe they don't care. We'll see. I'll be contacting them, and I'll update this review after the closing section. Of course through the magic of internet review time, it'll seem instantaneous to you.




Pros:


Cons:



 

Closing:

    While this isn't the most professionally orientated review, I would have taken it much more seriously if this product wasn't flawed. I really can't recommend this product to anyone at the current state of my unit. The true fact of the matter is, there is something wrong here! I don't want my money back! I want my product to work right. And that is what I am going to do, and I urge you to pick up the fight as well if need be. We'll soon see how far this has to go. I'm sure if all of us consumers aren't taken care of, the BBB would like something new to pursue.



 

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