Zardon

By Gene Emery

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (Reuters) - You can never knock the software industry for lack of creativity when it comes to wringing new life out of old franchises.


The most recent attempt is "Pac-Man All-Stars" (Infogrames, $20) for Windows. The original arcade game, available long before the days of the personal computer, had the Pac-Man figure, and later Ms. Pac-Man, cruising through a maze collecting pellets while trying to avoid the ghosts that were chasing them.

"Pac-Man All-Stars" takes the Pac-Man crew -- which also includes Pac-Man Jr. (shouldn't it be Pac-Boy?) and Professor Pac-Man -- and puts them in a three-dimensional world, allowing them to roam freely on the screen as pellets appear and ghosts continue their pursuit.

In the original game, coming in contact with a ghost meant losing a life. In the new version, the ghosts are mostly a nuisance because the game is a four-way race with the other Pac-people. The ghosts steal points and hinder your progress. If you don't collect the most pellet points (or at least come in third when you're playing on the easy setting), you lose.

The game has 25 levels in six settings that include a forest, a castle and a mine.

Because the original game had players moving through a rudimentary maze, there were only four directions to go and it was really easy to play. Unfortunately, you still have only four arrow keys, even though you have complete freedom of movement on the three-dimensional fields. Because I didn't have a joystick, I found myself doing a lot of zig-zagging, at least at first.

This game is more complicated than the original arcade version in other ways. There are four surfaces to move across, all with differing degrees of friction. Also, lots of odd devices like springboards and conveyor belts, as well as various "spells" that can be cast on a player.

One frustration is that its too easy to lose track of which character is yours. To bring the chaos to manageable levels, I recommend giving the computer just one character and pretending that you're playing a multi-player game.

I personally think the ideal Pac-Man game would be played from the first-person perspective, perhaps with a small third-person map on the side. You could scurry all over the landscape without worrying about where you are. Even better, let the players view the action from just over Pac-Man's shoulder, so if a ghost has managed to creep up behind you, you might not realize it until the last second. That game would be as addicting as the original.

RECYCLED 'MISSILE COMMAND'

In other cases of recycled software, newer may be better.

Consider the ancient black-and-white arcade game "Missile Command," where alien missiles are streaking out of the sky toward several cities and the player must target them from three artillery batteries.

The original arcade version of that game is now available for GameBoy Advance as part of "Atari Anniversary Advance," also from Infogrames. ($30). GameBoy Advance is a nice platform for this game because "Missile Command" is simple and GameBoy is portable. But it's not a perfect adaptation.

Because you need to position a targeting cursor in advance of a missile, the game lends itself to using a mouse, trackball or joystick. (I seem to recall the arcade version had a trackball.) Unfortunately, you don't get any of those options with GameBoy. You're stuck with the cumbersome up-down, left-right controls that limit your reaction time. And at my advanced age, anything that limits reaction time is not good.

For comparison, I picked up a copy of the PC version of "Missile Command," which was reengineered in 1999 by Hasbro Interactive and has now been repackaged as part of the Infogrames product "Atari Revival" ($20).

What a difference. General gameplay is much easier because you can use the mouse to quickly position the targeting cursor, and because you can use three adjacent keyboard keys -- A, S, and D -- to easily select which gun battery you want to activate.

Not surprisingly, the graphics are far superior to the GameBoy Advance version. Instead of black-and-white squiggles on a screen, you get full color. And instead of the beeps and bonks of the original, you get real sounds.

The PC version of "Missile Command" also has a three-dimension version, complete with several non-interactive cartoon sequences where, if you lose, you see vivid scenes of each city's destruction.

Purists or players with a fondness for nostalgia will want to go with "Atari Anniversary Advance," which is about $10 less than most GameBoy Advance games and has the original versions of other classic arcade games: "Asteroids," "Battlezone," "Tempest" and "Super Breakout."

However, "Atari Anniversary Advance" was on backorder at one online service I checked. A PC version of "Atari Anniversary Advance" is available for about $15, which is a fair price given the crudeness of the sound and graphics. It's $20 on Dreamcast ( news - web sites).

"Atari Revival," which has the updated version of "Missile Command," has two other classic arcade games: "Combat" and "Warlords," both of which were also juiced up for PC.