Recently I’ve been playing a lot of Pac-man on mame. Pac-Man has a fantastically simple, self-contained game concept. Upon first seeing the play area you instantly grasp the purpose of the game. The sound design is awesome, especially the tempo setting wacca-wacca sound (The Japanese word “paku” represents the sound of opening and closing the mouth).

It turns out the ghost’s movements are completely deterministic (there is no randomness in the AI). Because of this people have discovered patterns that will enable you to finish the game every time. There are actually just 3 patterns you need to get to level 17 every time.

Note that these patterns enable you to finish levels but not maximize points. The perfect Pac-man game is hitting the level 256 split-screen lock up, after eating every ghost and every fruit, and never losing a life. This was achieved in 1999 by Billy Mitchell, who said: “I understand the behavior of the ghosts and am able to manipulate the ghosts into any corner of the board I choose.”