Late at night, when we were sitting around looking at programs for this year book in the C&VG office we suddenly hear a mysterious sniffing sound coming from the computer room. Expecting to find Mal Function up to no good among the software we crept up to the door and slowly pushed it open. Not a Bug in sight. But sitting in the middle of the floor was a small round yellow being with a small tear running down its chubby cheek. A Pac-man. "What's wrong little fellow?" we asked. "I've heard you are doing a great programs we have known section in the yearbook," it said, wiping away another tear. "Why, yes," we replied, "But why are you upset? Pacmen are usually happy little creatures." "A little ghost told me that I was being left out!", it sobbed. "How could we leave you out! Everyone loves a Pac-man!" Its round face brightened. "Really!" it exclaimed. "Of course!" we said. "Just wait until I see that ghost!" said the Pacman. gulping down a powerpill. "I'll soon sort him out!" And with that he disappeared in a puff of golden smoke, leaving behind him this neat little listing for the Spectrum. This program gets as close to the original arcade version as is possible within the limits of the Spectrum. There are four power pills, two escape tunnels, and all the video-pills a Pac-man can eat. Because of the limitations of BASIC there is only one ghost - but he's a mean Pachunter. And there's a nice twist to the original theme which gives the little muncher additional problems. The power pills can be transformed into poisonous pills by the devious ghost. While they are poisonous to the Pac-man the pills stop flashing. You get three lives as in the arcade version and the Pac-man is controlled by using the "Q" key to move up, "Z" down, "M" left and "N" right. [No, he's not, it's 7/6/5/8. JimG] Program notes When entering the maze-printing section of the program the dots are full stops and must be coloured with ink 7 (white). The maze is drawn using user defined graphics and must be coloured using ink 1 (dark blue). To colour the maze do not use the INK comnand. Press CAPS SHIFT and SYMBOL SHIFT together, then hold down the CAPS SHIFT key and press the appropriate ink key. This method saves memory and is necessary if the program is to run on a 16k machine. [The program uses INK and runs in 16k OK. JimG] User defined graphics are shown as capital letters [No, they're not, they're shown as small letters. JimG] in quotes and should be entered in graphics mode. This program runs on a 48K machine. To run in 16K add line 5 CLEAR 65367: LOAD "". Then type in lines 1-5 and save on tape. Type NEW and enter the rest of the program. To play the game, load in the first part and run it. This will then define the characters and load in the main listing.