DoctorSpuds Reviews Things - K.C.'s Krazy Chase

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Copyright is a fickle thing, and many people do not understand copyright, in fact most people don’t, and as soon as somebody has an idea that is remotely similar to another more successful idea legal action is usually filed. This was the case with Magnavox/Philips K.C. Munchkin, a clone of Pac-Man that expanded upon the initial premise and modified much of the gameplay, which constitutes fair use. Atari, who owned the home console rights to create and distribute Pac-Man did not see things the same way and sued Magnavox/Philips. Atari lost the legal battle, K.C. Munchkin was labeled as fair use, but Atari wasn’t done just yet, since they had a pretty good thing going with the 2600, (for a little while at least) so they threatened retailers who sold K.C. Munchkin to stop sending them 2600’s and games, which would severely hurt those retailers. Everybody can agree that this was a very scummy move on Atari’s part, but was not unexpected, Magnavox/Philips responded though with a sequel game K.C.’s Krazy Chase, a game far superior to K.C. Munchkin which was far superior to Atari’s Pac-Man. I suppose we can think of K.C.’s Krazy Chase as a sort of middle finger to Atari, since the game took the ideas of K.C. Munchkin and expanded on those even further, and as such is the topic of today’s review.

Krazy Chase looks almost Identical to K.C. Munchkin, same sort of maze, K.C. looks the same but has a new and rather cool looking death animation, high score counter, but there are a few different things here. The most obvious difference is the giant evil Dratapillar, which is a being comprised of six balls and a head, then there are the Drats that look like Wobbaffet from Pokemon. The only other new thing is the addition of trees, which are eaten for some strange reason. We’re out of new stuff so let get on to the sounds.

This is one of the few games that support The Voice, which was the voice module for the Odyssey 2, the sounds it makes are… scary to say the least. One would assume K.C. would have the voice of a child, or something high pitched, due simply to the box art and what he looks like in game, but that is not what is given to us today. K.C. sounds like a 45 year old man have a VERY good time, he says things like “Go”, “Watch Out”, “Hurry”, and “Oh no” when he’s hit. The most terrifying thing though is when you finish a stage and the thing laughs, and it sounds so eerily real, and full of joy, like “I just killed this creature and beat its friends over the head with my larger round body, today’s been a good day”. Sicko

The gameplay of simple, eat all six segments of the Dratapillar, whilst avoiding the head and the Drats. Eating a segment will grant you the ability to incapacitate the Drats, but you are never safe from the Dratapillar’s head which will munch down on trees till the day it dies, which is very soon. Difficulty scales well, but skilled players will be bored until the 7^th or 8^th maze, when things get hilariously fast. This game has an excellent and innovative feature that as far as I can tell no other console ‘Pac-Man’ style game has offered, and that’s the option to program your own custom maze, from what I’ve read in the instruction manual the thing is incredibly clunky to work with, and doesn’t even have the ability to save your mazes for later.

This is definitely in the top 5 for my favorite Odyssey 2 games, and simply goes to show how meaningless Atari’s threats were, since Magnavox/Philips simply turned around, popped the finger, and put out a Pac-Man style game better than any of the officially licensed Pac-Man games Atari ever put out. This is a fun little game, which is well worth the price, I’m seeing boxed copies on Ebay from 15-20 dollars, don’t buy this game loose it’s a rip-off.

http://atariage.com/forums/blog/729/entry-15060-kcs-krazy-chase/