Previous Next

Nowadays I feel reluctant to spend evening with Pac-man or his close relations. So on learning that Munchees inhabit the corridors of a house, dodging ghosts and eating power pills, I set off to meet them without much enthusiasm.

First approaches revealed that their diet wasn't restricted to pills: they'd nibbled part of the program title away, and completely gobbled up the advertised game instructions. Tentative prods at the cursor keys, however, elicited a ground plan of the house, and the option to tackle up to four ghosts.

After that, things became fairly predictable. Each game comprised three plays, 10 points being scored per pill, with bonus plays for clearing all pills from a screen.

The house had a pair of side entrances, bonus fruit appeared fleetingly below the central room, and the ghosts (letter As) and the Munchees (letter O) trotted around at a steadily increasing pace. Unfortunately, a reload was needed to change the number of ghosts.

Minor flaws aside, Munchees seemed reliable if unoriginal. Its main attraction is price: all but one of the current rivals I know of cost rather more. But some of them do have extra features for varying the game.

C.C.