Random Elements of Ms. Pac-Man

Wondering how Ms. Pac-Man's randomness is different than the original Pac-Man's? It's all explained right here.
LINKS
INLINE LINKS

[BinaryHedgehog]

On the thing about the R register, you also have to remember that Ms. Pac-Man is essentially a glorified ROM Hack, and the act of reverse-engineering the hardware (or the work of someone else who did so and documented it) probably brought things to light that official developers weren't told about or told to avoid since it was never intended to be used so upfront. It honestly reminds me of the very funny way Argonaut pitched themselves to Nintendo: By breaking the original Game Boy's internal copy protection to load a custom bootscreen (the boot screen was the crux of the copy protection, and it might be cool to see a video about this some time) and still function normally and then, with brassiest of balls or greatest of hubris, showing it to Nintendo execs at a trade show to demonstrate their inside out knowledge of the hardware.

[savnarae]

RGME: That'd take too long in this video to explain. Let me know if you'd like a video on--
Me: YES

Absolutely I'd love a video on how Pac Man cabinets were upgraded to Ms. Pac Man, I didn't even know they were upgraded, I just thought new ones were manufactured?

[noyz-anything]

14:44 "They could even go through walls if they were programmed to"
You can actually see this in a lot of bootleg hacks, where the creators forgot to change the fruit paths, so they still act as if they're in the original mazes.

[Glacial_Fox]

"And from viewers like you, thank you"
PBS Kids Nostalgia: *hits harder than a neutron star*

[imveryangryitsnotbutter]

No, Retro Game Mechanics Explained, despite being a subscriber to your channel for years so I could learn about exactly these sorts of things, I have zero desire to learn about how Ms. Pac-Man cabinets were upgraded. I don't know how anyone could possibly come to the conclusion that I, an enjoyer of deep-dive technical explanations on all things retro game related, could ever be even remotely interested in hearing about how Ms. Pac-Man cabinets were upgraded. Frankly, it completely defies all logical explanation how you could every believe that I, a complete video game nerd who loves exactly this type of content, could EVER, in a MILLION YEARS, want to hear about how Ms. Pac-Man cabinets were upgraded. Gosh.

[HerrDoktorWeberMD]

"let me know if you'd like a video on-" Literally whatever you're selling, I'm buying. I want it all, teach me everything about obscure assembly-coded stuff.

[RipVanFish]

I’m interested in seeing how the arcade cabinets were upgraded!

[proxy]

using 6502 assembly syntax on Z80 assembly code is kinda cursed but also based.

[TheSizzleDash]

As soon as I saw the upload, I said “Yes. I love these videos. I’m watching this immediately.”

Not even joking, not even trying to overrate.

[LucaioSuper]

I would absolutely love an in-depth series about Ms. Pac-Man's patches and also comparing with the prototype footage and documentation we have of Crazy Otto and other builds. Maybe even a Pac-Man Plus bonus video!

[ClassicTVManX]

The round 256 kill screen error in Ms. Pac-Man is almost the same as in Pac-Man. That is, if you can make it through the other stages past 100 that have errors all their own (in particular the 130s-150s rounds); in those cases, the glitch results due to an incorrect condition being tested in the jump-to commands (the N, or negative, flag being tested rather than the proper C, or carry, flag).

[Frn]

6:23 YES please make a video on that!!! I love this sort of deep dives into explanations of retro games' quirks and bugs

[Myne]

Am I the only one who remembers a version of PAC-Man that had wildly different maze layouts? Like, some of them had areas that were more open than just straight corridors.

[TARINunit]

"Fun" fact: Ms. Pac Man is very unpopular with Namco themselves because of legal reasons. While everything else in the franchise is wholly owned by Bandai Namco, Ms. Pac (both the character and the game) are joint-owned by a company now known as AtGames, who get royalties. This usually isn't a problem, Pac Man World used Ms. Pac Man without any red tape, but re-releasing the Ms. Pac Man game is very tricky, and in the 2010s Namco have decided to just replace her with other female characters

[James]

"How exactly a Pac-Man arcade cabinet was upgraded into a Ms. Pac-Man cabinet, back in the day"
Oh no... Let me guess, PROMs, masking the bits that need to be changed, and only being able to set bits to 0 to change existing code?

[Privatebean]

This channel actually helps me understand old games since I wasn’t old enough to play most of them

[Marenthyu]

I just had mini-pretzels, so i can confirm they are a good fruit.

[kitsunelunari]

1:31 a very nice amount of changed bytes

[PhantomBoi-ruci]

I gotta thank this channel for my Pac-Knowledge
Used some of it to set the high score on a Ms. Pac-Man machine at an event I went to (34400 points, which probably isn't a lot, but it is to me!!), even explained some of the mechanics to a friend I made there, all thanks to your videos ^^
Although the machine was modified, you started with 5 lives and NO chance of getting 1UPs, which was... offputting, but I pulled through I saw the first 2 cutscenes before losing everything to Sue 2 levels after

[marscaleb]

Thank you for this video, and especially thank you for explaining how the ghosts determine which route is the "shortest" to reach its target tile.

I've been working on developing a Pac-man styled game, and I was really wondering how that was determined when I was developing that logic myself. A linear value seems like quite a logical way to do it! I wound up implementing A* pathfinding and calculating which tile would have the shortest possible route to their desired target. I tried using a linear check like was done here, but I had ghosts that kept getting caught in a loop in one of my mazes.
Designing a Pac-Man maze is surprisingly harder than one might think!