forums.marpirc.net

fixed on mame154
THIS GAME AS YOU probably remember ,was half videogame and half pinball, that being said. It has some complicated instuctions in the game start (before adding a coin)
if you look in the button assign for mame config , there are multiple
key values for a dozen buttons.
in order to simplify the game i propose making a special rules
prohibiting a player from
entering the downward facing tunnels
reason being you get stuck on a board that looks
like this and then by pressing buttons d , f
you can rack-up a bunch of points.
side tunnels are ok though.

the problem is you're only able to get the power pills / change the difficulty if you use the 'pinball' part, so trying to restrict players to the mazes probably isn't going to work well..

you might have to simply come up with an approved key sequence to get you back into the maze (with powerups) and allow it to only be used once per level or something.

http://replay.marpirc.net/r/babypac

Cheers guys. Phil maybe you can delete your inp now?

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Yes, you CAN play the game playing maze only, but it's damn hard... getting past 3rd maze seems quite a task without power pills... This game should imo NOT be archived though... the video game part is playable on it's own and sort of challenging fun.

One shouldn't enter the tunnel since it "ends" the game. You don't actually have to go to the tunnel to get at least uppermost two power pills which you can get simply by pushing keyboard keys! You can also get extra score and stuff by pushing some keyboard keys (keys which activate pinball features).

I think the rules should be something like:

Don't go through the bottom tunnels. Don't use other inputs apart from coin, start game and moving Baby Pac in the maze. (aka do not use keys that activate pinball parts of the game)
Just play the damn maze.

Of course we could come up with a rule for inserting pills etc but I think that may lead to lots of trouble for confirmers, since everything you do at "pinball" part gives points as well.

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I'd really like to see Pacwus, Rick Carter etc to just play the maze and see how far they can get without any powerups and maybe pick up some tactics myself from them.

I have an opportunity to play the actual arcade game in couple days, there's this pinball collector here who has the game and arranges a game night once a month. Was there a month ago and got seriously hooked on Baby Pac, playing it like 3 hours in a row. Great game!

Meanwhile I've played a few games on Visual Pinball but I have to say it's not the same at all, the pinball emulation plays really nothing like the original; ball bounces all wrong.

The TJT wrote: Phil maybe you can delete your inp now?

Done, it was just to launch the debate.
I never saw this game in arcade before, but I like the idea to earn pills to eat ghosts in a parallel game ; too bad it can't be emulated correctly.
So let's deal with the "no tunnel" rule (special rules edited, with link to this thread)

Merci

Yes it's a great idea for a game, you can't really tell if it's more a pinball or a video game. I played Baby Pac in 80s a bit but thought it was sort of too hard and a bit of a coin-eater so it never became one of my top favourites. Next time I played it was in 2002 at LA, Redondo beach pier if I recall correctly, I liked it then more... but was still puzzled by the difficulty. And now I really got the bug when playing it on free play at this collector's basement a month ago... it's a really fun game once you get the hang of it!

If you have Vpinmame+Visual pinball installed I suggest you give it a try... it's still pretty fun despite pinball emulation not being 100%. Actually pinball physics are well emulated, the only problem is that I think flippers are at slightly wrong angle since the ball flies way too much to sides so it basically just requires a bit different technique than the actual physical pinball.

Actual cabinet is rather pretty in its colourful way...

I've tried to play this and it is tough without the power pills!

My opinion is that we should allow the tunnel for these reasons:
* z,d,f can be used in non-tunnel gameplay too - so that is not a reason to disallow it
* after returning from tunnel (usually using combinations of ctrl, Alt, X keys returns without earning any extra points) the game hasn't ended, and you go back to your maze as it was when you entered the tunnel

Just my opinion on this.
Kranser.