Baby Pac-Man
Back in the 1980's, someone decided to merge video games and pinball.
Caveman and Baby Pac-Man were the first games that did this (Granny and the
Gators is another that followed this formula). While Caveman was a
good video game and a decent pinball game, Baby Pac-Man was a decent pinball
game and a fair video game. Imagine playing Pac-Man without any power
pellets and very tough ghosts? Not much fun is it?
The game starts off in the video game mode. You can run around the maze and clean all the dots. As I mentioned above, there are no power pellets to save you. And the ghosts are all intelligent, unlike the arcade game. If you stay in here, you will die and you will die quickly. It is the only pinball game that I know of that you can complete a game without ever actually playing any pinball. It is entirely possible to lose all your guys (which are the same as balls, you get three) in the video game section and never play any pinball. So the best thing to do is get out of the maze as fast as possible. This is done when you go down one of the open tunnels at the bottom. This will put you into the pinball part of the game.
As far as a pinball game goes, Baby Pac-Man is decent. There are a few targets to hit which can help unlock power pellets. There are a few places on the side to send the ball. And that is about it. The only way to lose the ball is down the middle drain, which will put you back into the video game without the escape hatches. The only way to unlock those is to complete a level. You better hope you unlocked some power pellets or you are going to lose a ball and fast.
While the pinball/video game hybrids were an interesting idea, I am glad that it was short-lived. None of them were that great (though Caveman was the best of the bunch, in my opinion) as each part was never given the proper treatment. But I do wonder what they could have done if they really put some thought into making each part a solid game that could stand on its own.
This is just a review of the pinball machine. If you are looking for the actual pinball machine, you may want to check out ebay. Click below to see if you can find this game.