Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness / Pac-Man World (GBA) review - Part two

I decided at the last minute to split the post into two posts due to the length so here is the review for Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness.

A year after Pac-Man World was released developed Namco and Full Fat released Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness a short and fun game for the PS1, N64, Dreamcast and Game Boy Advance. Playing differently to Pac-Man World which was a platform game Maze Madness is a four-direction puzzle game which plays like the original Pac-Man game.


Like Pac-Man World the plot is not much to write home about, a princess has been kidnapped and four gems are going to be stolen by a witch. Ms. Pac-Man needs to gather the gems, stop the witch and rescue the princess. It is nice though to see a female rescuing a female instead of the standard male rescuing a female.

Like PMW the graphics are nice, vibrant and well done and the music for my taste is slightly better but unlike PMW the game play is completely different. Set over four levels with three stages within each one Ms. Pac-Man must collect pellets (to be able to open all sections that need to be passed) and solve puzzles whilst trying to stay alive from the numerous enemies who prowl the stages, enemies such as ghosts, hellhounds and vampires. The only way that they can be defeated is by collecting the larger pellets and touching them whilst they are vulnerable, no "butt-bouncing" or pellet throwing this time round.

Each stage has four gold stars that can be gained by completing tasks, the tasks being to collect all of the pellets, all of the fruit, reach a certain score and complete the stage within a certain time. The stars can add challenges to the level if decide to try and collect them all but chances are that you will need to do numerous run through to collect complete all of the tasks. You need to collect a minimum of thirty-two stars to be able to fight the big boss at the end of the game but after that it's pretty much just for fun to collect the rest of them, as far as I am aware.

Despite being an incredibly short game I did really enjoy Maze Madness. The puzzles are not massively difficult and generally consist of moving blocks, bouncing over them or blowing them up but each stage has lots to explore as you try to complete the star challenges or find keys to progress past locked boxes or search for fruit. It's for these reasons that I would recommend playing Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness on the Game Boy Advance.

7/10