| Pac-Man Plus | |
|---|---|
 North American arcade flyer | |
| Developer(s) | Bally Midway |
| Publisher(s) | Bally Midway |
| Series | Pac-Man |
| Platform(s) | Arcade |
| Release | March 1983[1] |
| Genre(s) | Maze |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, alternating two-player |
| Arcade system | Namco Pac-Man |
Pac-Man Plus is an arcade game in the Pac-Man series, developed and released by Bally Midway in 1983 as an official enhancement of the original Pac-Man. Distributed as an upgrade kit for existing Pac-Man hardware in North America, it modifies rules, visuals, and item behavior while retaining the base maze-chase design.[1]
Gameplay remains broadly consistent with Pac-Man: the player guides Pac-Man through a single-screen maze to eat all pellets while avoiding four ghosts. Power Pellets temporarily render ghosts vulnerable and worth increasing point values if eaten in succession.
Pac-Man Plus introduces a set of rule and presentation changes intended to disrupt fixed patterns and raise difficulty:
Rounds loop on completion with increasing speed and shorter vulnerability windows, as in the original.
Midway marketed Pac-Man Plus as a **legal conversion** for Pac-Man cabinets—an in-house alternative to unlicensed modification kits then common in the early 1980s. The kit replaced the four program ROMs and two graphics ROMs on the main board and added a daughterboard that connected via ribbon cable to the Z80 CPU socket; the daughterboard contained its own Z80 and support logic and was epoxy-potted to deter reverse-engineering. The result preserved operators’ investment in existing cabinets while providing a “new” title on location.[1][2]
The game was released to arcades in March 1983 as a conversion package for the Namco Pac-Man hardware platform in the United States.[1]
Arcade Express rated the game 8/10, noting that it “features all the graphics, challenge and excitement of the original while eliminating patterned play,” with random elements and “a few surprises” creating “an interesting new twist for Pac-fans.”[3]
No contemporary home conversions were released. Later appearances include:
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