Ms. Pac Man Controls

[Rick Dangerous]

I played this game the other night after playing it on Lynx (which has beautiful controls) and all I can say is what the hell!

 

The Pac won't go up or down when I press up or down, it will only go when I hit a wall. This is with a really nice six button controller that I use for tons of other games and have no problems with.

 

Is this game just poorly programmed or am I missing something?

[Chilly Willy]

Some games don't like the 6-button pad. Hold the MODE button on the pad while powering on the Genesis to switch the pad into 3-button mode.

[Gabriel]

I played this game the other night after playing it on Lynx (which has beautiful controls) and all I can say is what the hell!

 

The Pac won't go up or down when I press up or down, it will only go when I hit a wall. This is with a really nice six button controller that I use for tons of other games and have no problems with.

 

Is this game just poorly programmed or am I missing something?

 

Hold Mode while turning on the game. Ms Pac is a pre-6 button title, and doesn't play nice with newer controllers.

[Rick Dangerous]

Thank you all for the solution

[TrekMD]

Cool, I was not aware of this solution. Thanks.

[Csonicgo]

So THAT is how to make those controllers work.

[Chilly Willy]

So THAT is how to make those controllers work.

There are some cheap third party controllers that don't do that, but all Sega pads should, and the better third party ones will as well. I've got one third party pad that doesn't even have the MODE button! So it certainly doesn't do that.

[imstarryeyed]

Just wanted to chime in and say this trick is also necessary to get forgotten worlds working on a 6 button pad. If you don't do it the game starts at the story screen and then jumps right to the game over screen. It's actually a pretty interesting thing to see but no fun if you were trying to play that game and did not know to use the mode button.

[Lynxpro]

It doesn't work well with my real 3 button GamePad either. Or my Asciiware joystick. I haven't had time to try it with my other 3 button GamePads or with the Hold option though. Still, it should work fine with straight out of the box controllers unless Tengen somehow calibrated the game to make it work best with their own GamePads as a ploy to sell more of 'em.