Pac-Mania is a "hit" from the coin-ops, converted to almost all 8bit and 16bit computers and consoles. It is one of the best Pac Man games ever created. The NES conversion was developed in 1990 and a year later, its main antagonist's (the Master System) version followed.
Review
STORY / GAMEPLAY Pac Mania brings a different style in Pac Man gaming. The levels and characters are presented in 3D and this time Pac Man can also jump. And believe me this jump can save you from hard situations. But Pac Man must watch out for ghosts that also have jumping abilities. The main goal of the game is to swallow all the dots and complete the level. The funny ghosts now hover in the air instead of...walking. Dots and energy pellets hang in midair. In addition, Pac-Man is granted with a new power: He can jump up and over ghosts! There's also a use a Pac Booster that lets him move at super-speeds. You'll love the new challenging levels - they are available in so many mind-boggling shapes and they'll surely turn you into a certified Pac-Maniac! What a simple, addictive and excellent game to play indeed!
GRAPHICS / SOUND The Sharp X68000 conversion is technically almost identical to the arcade and superior to any other 16bit home-computer conversion (and possibly console). It features the very colorful visuals and innovative level design and concept of the original coin-op. The game offers more than 170 colors on-screen(!) and runs pretty smoothly around huge gameplay areas with big sprites, in contrast the other 16bit counterparts. The game's sound is arcade perfect featuring the original funny tunes along with the coin-op's sampled sound effects.
CPU: X68000 (1987) to SUPER (1991) models - Hitachi HD68HC000 (16/32-bit) @ 10 MHz OR XVI (1991) to Compact (1992) models - Motorola 68000 (16/32-bit) @ 16 MHz OR X68030 (1993) models - Motorola MC68EC030 (32-bit) @ 25 MHz Also there is a Sub-CPU available (Oki MSM80C51 MCU) MEMORY: 1-4MB RAM (expandable up to 12 MB), 1MB ROM (128 KB BIOS, 768 KB Character Generator), 1056KB VRAM (512KB graphics, 512KB text, 32KB sprites) GRAPHICS: GPU (graphics processing unit) chipset: Sharp-Hudson Custom Chipset
Color palette of 65,536 (16-bit RGB high color depth) and maximum up to 65,536 colors on screen (from 256x240 to 512x512 resolution), up to 64 colors (from 640x480 to 1024x1024 resolution)
Graphics hardware: Hardware scrolling, priority control, super-impose, dual tilemap background layers, sprite flipping.
Graphical planes: 1-4 bitmap planes, 1-2 tilemap planes, 1 sprite plan
It supports 128 sprites on screen (16×16 sprite size), 32 sprites per scanline, 256 sprite patterns in VRAM. SOUND: Yamaha YM2151: Eight FM synthesis channels
Yamaha YM3012: Floating point DAC with 2-channel stereo output
Oki MSM6258: One 4-bit ADPCM mono channel @ 22 kHz sampling rate