The Ms. Pac-Man Mystery
How three guys from Montana invented the ultimate strategy
by Paul Stokstad
[Appeared in the June 1984 issue of "Computer Games"]
        
        Pac-Man was a game you could beat. You could beat it by memorizing
patterns. The ghosts, you see, weren't programmed for randomness. If you
zigged and they zagged, they'd do the exact same thing in a similar 
situation. It wasn't long before everybody knew the patterns to beat Pac-Man.
        Ms. Pac-Man is a different story. The ghosts are programmed for
randomness, so there isn't a pattern that exists to beat it--the ghosts
behave differently in each game. But there is one technique that will earn
a player an incredible amount of points "Grouping." If you can induce the
ghosts to move close to one another, you can stay alive and get 1,600 points 
when you gobble them near a power pill. This is the story of three guys from 
Montana who got together and figured out how to give Ms. Pac-Man a beating 
she'll never forget.
        If Tom Asaki was hot in the summer of '82, it was due to the 
temperature, not to his skill at Ms. Pac-Man. He was pretty good then, but he 
wasn't grouping the ghosts yet. At least that's what Don Williams says, and 
Don should know, since he regularly watched Tom play down at Games Are Fun in 
Bozeman, Montana. Superior players usually can't put their techniques into 
words. One way to get good is to watch a guy's moves. Don got pretty good at 
Ms. Pac-Man too.
        But Tom Asaki and Don Williams didn't really get tight until Spencer
Ouren, another Bozeman boy, started sharing his Ms. Pac-Man techniques. 
Spencer knew Tom and introduced Don to Tom. From then on, whenever one of
them picked up a trick, he would share it with the other two. In January of 
1983, they were not playing the game as individuals--beating Ms. Pac-Man had
become a group project. Their goal was to score the first- second- and third-
highest total scores ever recorded at the game. They felt that if they put 
their heads together, they could come up with the best system to totally ace 
out the rest of the world.
        Grouping is not a mystery. It's a standard technique among better 
Ms. Pac-Man players. The basic move is accomplished from the "hold" position 
on the board. This is a spot that the ghosts will never cross to destroy you. 
The hold is located in a different location on each of the four maze patterns 
of the game. By moving out of this safe spot in varying directions, you can 
influence the separate moving ghosts to get closer to one another in pursuit 
of the faked direction you appear to be taking. Then gou can pop back into 
the hold and the ghosts will be grouped in a tighter, more manageable pattern.
        Grouping is pretty easy on the first three maze patterns (waves one 
through nine). But even the best players always seemed to get wiped out on 
the fourth maze pattern, called the "Junior" boards. The problem was that
there didn't seem to be a hold on the Junior boards. The other three holds 
didn't work, and the Bozeman Think Tank, they called themselves, were 
continually killed by the blue-green ghost. Without a hold on the fourth maze, 
it would be impossible to conquer the game, because after the tenth wave half 
the waves are Junior boards.
        
The Deception
   
        When they had just about given up, a fellow by the name of Matt 
Brass met up with the Think Tank. Brass, a pretty decent player himself, had 
just returned from the North American Video Olympics in Ottumwa, Iowa. When 
Brass described the Olympics scene to Tom, Spencer and Don, he dropped a 
bombshell--some players were grouping the ghosts on the Junior boards.
        It wasn't true. Brass wasn't lying--he had meant to say that some 
players were grouping before the Junior boards. 
        But the Think Tank panicked. They thought they were pretty good at 
Ms. Pac-Man. Now someone, some mysterious someone, had whipped the Junior 
boards, which had seemed impossible.
        Believing that the impossible was now possible (and had been 
achieved), the Think Tank pressed on with their own solution. They thought, 
"Well, if it's possible, we want to be able to do it too." It was like being 
told that Mt. Everest had been scaled when it hadn't. The miscommunication 
from Brass made the Think Tank believe grouping was possible on the Junior 
boards. In fact, no one had ever done it.
        They worked five days straight on the problem. The first thing they
did was to use the "rack advance" inside the Ms. Pac-Man cabinet to advance 
the game to the higher boards. The found that if they just played the game 
normally, by the time they worked their way to the higher boards, they became 
reluctant to take any chances for fear of ruining a good score. And you don't 
make any breakthroughs if you're not willing to take chances.
        With a lot of research, the Think Tank, and especially Spencer, 
decided that the key to grouping had to involve the four tunnels on the sides 
of the screens. They started playing around in there, luring the ghosts on 
wild goose chases to see how theg would respond. One ghost--Sue--seemed 
particularly attracted to Ms. Pac-Man in the tunnels. Spencer discovered that 
if the pink ghost is coming straight at you, you can deceive him by pointing 
Ms. Pac-Man's eyes upward. The pink ghost, they found, has been programmed to 
go in the same direction as you and to get in front of gou, even if there is 
no channel to move. This information can be used for avoidance and grouping. 
With these and other techniques, Spencer was soon using the tunnels and 
grouping three of the ghosts. The other members of the Think Tank added 
refinements.
        It was Tom who made the breakthrough. By using Spencer's method to
group three ghosts, he discovered a hold! The hold, which didn't seem to 
exist on the Junior boards, was there--but only if you grouped three of the 
ghosts before you went into it. With this knowledge, it became a simple 
matter of using the tunnels to group the three ghosts on the run, go into the 
hold [see diagram] to wait for Sue, and then nail all of them. The Think Tank 
was soon achieving scores in the 400,000 range, which had been considered
impossible.
        You can imagine how Tom, Don and Spencer felt when they spoke with 
Matt Brass again and discovered the communication breakdown. The Bozeman 
Think Tank had done the impossible--only because theg mistakenly believed it 
had already been achieved. Sometimes psychology can be just as important for 
good scores as eye/hand coordination.
        (This was a very basic sketch of a complex system worked out by the 
Bozeman Three. The total system includes various fakes, patterns tn run, and 
strategies to control the ghosts on all four mazes of the game. If you're 
interested in the complete system for dominating Ms. Pac-Man, Spencer Ouren 
will send it to you. Send $5 to cover his postage and sweat to: Spencer 
Ouren, 1724 S. 19th St., Bozeman, MT 58705.)
      
Think Tank Tips
  
        When you play a new game, watch other people play, then play the 
game yourself, just getting used to the controls. Then try to master what 
other people are doing on the game. Finally, try to invent new moves, new 
solutions for situations. Don says to "look for a goal, something to do to 
get through each board, then develop that skill and use it in the game."
        According to Tom, you can get high scores in Ms. Pac-Man by using 
lightning quick reflexes and open-field running. But keeping up that 
intensity over an hour long game is impossible. You eventually slip. You 
blink. It's better to explore "systems" of play if you really want to hit 
high scores.

[Scanned and edited by Dennis Brown -- dgbrown (at) pixesthesia (dot) com]