Pac-Land isn't a particularly accurate Speccy to arcade conversion. It also looks like it's a 'rush job', especially compared to the Commodore version. Thankfully it retains the key elements which made the original game so enjoyable.

So where do I start? At the beginning, I suppose. What you need to realise is that the original tape version has a really awful loader. It's a single-load game however after the first bit (the header) loads, the screen goes black with a white border. The game looks like it's crashed. It hasn't though, because if you wait a little while the loading screen appears. Not good if you're not patient enough to wait that far and go back to the shop for a replacement. Like I did. *Ahem* Anyway.

Once Pac-Land has loaded, there's a slightly pointless 'adding credits' procedure (you just press Enter a few times) before you can play. Perhaps it's meant to add atmosphere, or something. Well it doesn't.

So you select '1' for a one-player game and off you go. The music is great, really jolly and the game also plays the 'death sequence' music. It certainly is an accurate representation of the arcade original. As soon as you see the first screen, it becomes immediately apparent, the graphics aren't.

They're all yellow (with a bit of blue for the sky and the ground is black) and a little crude-looking. At the same time the sprites appear to be somewhat cute (in a crude type of way). Every time I play Pac-land I wonder if the Speccy programmers could have produced a different, more colourful version. But they haven't, so I concentrate on the game in hand. Like I should be doing now.

Pac-Land in the arcades is a right-left horizontal scrolling game. Speccy Pac-Land is a flip-screen affair. Most of the time this is fine. If you're just walking along the bottom of the screen (instead of bouncing around like a madman which I normally have Pac-man doing) then you'll just stop at the end of some screens.

This is because there's an obstacle immediately in front of you, in the next screen. You soon get used to where they are however you also realise that if the game scrolled, you would have seen the obstacle in the first place.

There ghostly enemies have also been cut down on the Speccy version. You're missing out on the 'girlie' ghosts that move up and down on the desert level and the pogo-stick'ing' ghosts in the woodland level (to name but two). Spec-Chums are left with the standard ghost, the car-driving ghost and the plane-driving ghost.

The game thus loses points for not being accurate enough however if you've never played the arcade game you'll never notice that something's missing. Pac-land gets away with this type of affair frequently and only because the game plays well enough with what is there. There's a screenshot of the arcade version on the right if you're interested.

I get the feeling that Pac-Land was designed for a basic 48K machine with the thumping choon added as a superficial benefit for 128K machines. Had the game been developed with 128K machines in mind I'm sure that some (not all) of the missing elements would have been added to the game.

Well, I've spent nearly 500 words saying what's wrong with the game. Pac-Land is in the Games Review section because I really, really enjoy playing it. Despite the crude graphics, the basic element the game has retained is its' playability. It's great fun bouncing around, timing your jumps so you avoid the incoming ghost-car and ghost-plane, collecting the fruit and then chomping the ghosts once you've snaffled a power pill.

The levels are just long enough so that you don't get bored looking at the same scenery and there's a sense of achievement when you get to the portal at level 1.3, get the fairy boots and bounce back to Pac-town to meet Ms Pac-man and the Pac-kid.

I really enjoy playing Pac-Land. It certainly helps if you like Pac-man (and other Pac-games) or Mario-esque platform games. If you're used to other versions, such as the Commodore of 16bit ones then you may be at first disappointed. However, playability is Pac-Land's coup de grace and that is firmly in place. Enjoy. It wouldn't be in TRB Top 100 games if I didn't.