"Muncher" is the first game to be found on side A of the now legendary and infamous "Cassette 50" tape from Cascade. This one is written in 100% pure BASIC and (as its title would inevitably suggest) inspired by Pacman. This is just one of a practically uncountable number of games of its type written for the speccy.
Most of the games on the Cascade tape are below average, as is this one. No doubt if all speccy Pacman-derived games were lined up according to quality and enjoyment, then this one would find itself somewhere near the tail-end.
Bad points:-
The initial instructions are gradually emitted across the screen in the clichéd mock-typerwriter style with one beeper click per character. Alas, this can't be skipped. No doubt after loading the game up more than once this would become somewhat tedious. All that is really essential are the in-game keys (Q,Z,I,P).
The Pacman character is shown from a top-down perspective as if looking downwards from above its head. Hence, it has two eyes instead of the more usual single-eyed side-on depiction. I don't object to the idea itself, but since the ghosts are shown side-on as usual this looks a bit inconsistent here.
Gameplay is slow even though there are only two ghosts and one pacman character moving about the screen. I feel that even in BASIC it could have been at least slightly faster than this. Naturally all movements are locked to the 8x8 character grid, although I can't criticise anything written in BASIC for that.
The ghost "AI" is very simple, utilising the straightforward, predictable method of always moving one step towards the player. Also, since the maze has lots of open spaces that are two characters wide, the ghosts can very often move diagonally in a single move although the player generally can't. The ghosts can of course be outwitted by moving back and forth through the "warp" tunnel that connects the left and right edges of the maze and it's a safe bet that a ghost will never follow you through this. There is only one maze layout in the game.
Although there are a generous eight power pills laid out for the player, the four near the centre can be tricky to get to without getting caught. This is due to the aforementioned ghost "AI" coupled with the rather open layout at the center of the maze. Ghosts turn from their usual magenta to green when a power pill is active but they'll still chase you anyway and there is no warning that a pill is about to wear off.
The maze is quite possibly oversized with too many dots and given the slowness of the game it can take a while to finish a level. Also, only one keypress at a time is detected. INKEY$ is used here, but using IN would have possibly improved things quite a bit.
When you lose a life, the pacman character is transported back to the centre of the maze. However, the ghosts remain where they were before. So if you were unfortunate to get eaten near the centre then you could lose all three lives in one go. Nasty!
There also appears to be an equals sign missing in the "status line" at the bottom right of the screen (play the game to see what I mean). Perhaps it's a bit petty to point this out, but it does give the impression that the game development may have been a little rushed.
Good points:-
Despite the previously mentioned problems, I actually quite like the elementary UDGs and the game is at least colourful and makes good use of simple sound effects.
The game is also a bit of a challenge. It's no mean feat to complete a level, made difficult perhaps for all the wrong reasons but still manages to feel like a minor achievement on completion.
So overall, the bad points somewhat outnumber the good but this is not the absolute worst of the genre.
It was once stated somewhere that all "bedroom coders" who implemented their own pacman games should be forced to play them as punishment. In this case it'd hardly be "hard labour" but certainly a minor deterrent!
1983 Cascade Games Ltd (UK)
by author still unknown
Personally I think this is the best game in the Cassette 50 compilation, probably why it comes first.
For a BASIC game I think its quite good, other than that its just another game.
