Pac-Man

1. Know your ghosts. Blinky (red) hunts you straight-on, Pinky (pink) aims to cut you off, Inky (cyan) positions relative to Blinky, and Clyde (orange) flips between chase and retreat. Watch them move for 10–15 seconds at the start of each life — the patterns repeat.

2. Clear corners first, center last. Eat the outer corridors before you move inward. This keeps escape routes open and stops you from getting boxed in when ghosts converge. The left and right edge tunnels wrap the screen — use them to break pursuit chains.

3. Save Power Pellets for emergencies. The four large flashing dots in the corners turn ghosts blue and edible for a few seconds. Don’t burn them early. Wait until ghosts cluster or you’re trapped, then grab one and reverse to eat multiple ghosts for escalating points (200, 400, 800, 1600).

4. Memorize the fruit spawn timing. Bonus fruit appears twice per maze after you’ve eaten a specific number of dots (70 and 170). It stays visible for only a few seconds. The fruit spawns in the center below the ghost box — plan your route to grab it without dying.

5. Practice the safe spot near the ghost box. There’s a small area just above the T-junction below the ghost pen where you can pause briefly while ghosts path around you. Learn this position for breathing room during tight chases.

6. Survive first, score later. Focus on clearing all 240 dots and advancing to the next board. Master the movement and timing before you chase perfect clears or ghost-chain combos — the ghosts get faster every maze.

• Ghosts patrol fixed routes until you eat a dot. Each ghost follows a preset path when you’re idle. The instant you collect any dot, they switch to chase logic. Use this to bait them into position before you commit to a corridor.

• The tunnel wraps slow ghosts down. Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde all decelerate inside the side tunnels. Duck through when they’re close behind—you’ll gain several tiles of separation on the far side.

• Corners let you turn earlier than ghosts can. Input your next direction a few frames before the intersection and Pac-Man pivots the instant the tile allows it. Ghosts evaluate turns later in their logic, so tight cornering creates micro-gaps that add up over a full board clear.

• Power Pellet timing is everything after Board 1. Energizer duration drops fast—by Board 5 it’s under three seconds, and by Board 9 the ghosts barely turn blue. Don’t wait for all four to cluster; eat the pellet when two are in range and chase immediately.

• Fruit spawn is tied to dot count, not time. The bonus appears after 70 dots and again after 170 dots (on most boards). Plan your routes so you’re near the spawn tile at those thresholds—the fruit only stays for a few seconds.

• Inky’s AI uses Blinky’s position as an anchor. He targets a tile calculated from both your position and where Blinky is. If Blinky is far away, Inky becomes erratic. Manipulating red’s position indirectly controls cyan.

• The NES port has no kill screen. Unlike the arcade original, you can loop indefinitely if your execution holds. The difficulty plateaus around Board 21.

Cherry Stage Pattern Break

New players lose their first life on the Cherry board (stage 1) by treating the ghosts as random. They’re not. Blinky (red) targets Pac-Man’s current position; Pinky (pink) aims four tiles ahead of your facing direction. The common death: running straight up the left lane while Pinky cuts you off at the top-left corner and Blinky closes from behind. Use the T-junction one tile below the ghost box as your pivot point. When Pinky commits to the left lane, reverse down and loop right through the bottom tunnel. Blinky follows you through the tunnel while Pinky paths around—this creates a 3–4 second window to clear the right half of the board.

Power Pellet Waste on Strawberry/Orange Boards

By the Strawberry stage (stage 2), ghost speed increases and players burn power pellets defensively instead of offensively. The stuck point: eating a pellet while ghosts are scattered across the board, then chasing blue ghosts into dead-ends and wasting 80% of the timer. Corral before consuming. Clear one quadrant completely, then position yourself so 2–3 ghosts are in the lanes adjacent to a pellet. Eat the pellet only when you have a clean sightline to multiple blues. The top-right pellet is ideal—ghosts path through the right lane frequently, and you have the tunnel as a reset if the pattern breaks.

Apple Board Speed Panic

Stage 3 (Apple) is where the NES port’s input lag becomes lethal. Ghosts move faster than your brain can process the turn timing, and the common death is corner cutting—you press down a frame too early, Pac-Man doesn’t turn, and you run face-first into Blinky. Use audio cues, not visual. The wakka sound effect has a rhythm. One full wakka-wakka cycle = two tiles of movement. Count two cycles, then input your turn. This compensates for the NES controller polling delay and gives you consistent corners even at Apple-board speeds.