Pac-man Patterns

Pac-man Patterns

These patterns only work on the original NAMCO™ arcade machines (or original Midway arcade machine in the United States).

These patterns were made by John Birkner and enabled him to score 3,214,270 points on Pacman. You can find the patterns documented in the book "The Video Master's Guide to Pac-man", written by Jim Sykora and John Birkner, published in 1982 by Bantam Books, Inc.

Pacman machines can be set to "slow" speed or "fast" speed games. The patterns below work for both slow speed and fast speed machines, but the same pattern doesn't work for the same screen on each. The table below, reproduced from the book mentioned above, shows which patterns work on which screen. To figure out which speed machine you are using, observe the "attract" mode, which is when the Pacman machine is playing itself. If Pacman is eaten in the

bottom left-hand corner above the energizer (by Inky, the blue-green ghost), the game is set at slow speed.
bottom left-hand corner below the energizer (by Clyde, the orange-brown ghost), then the game is set at fast speed.
bottom right hand corner of the board by Inky (or above the ghost box by Pinky), then the machine is using the "Atlantic City" chip; these patterns will not work on those machines.

Once you know which type of machine you are playing, choose the correct pattern from the table below.

Fruit Symbol	Slow-Game Patterns	Fast-Game Patterns
Cherry	A	B
Strawberry	B	C
1st Peach	B	D
2nd Peach	C	D
1st Apple	D	D
2nd Apple	E	F
1st Grape	D	G
2nd Grape	D	D
1st Galaxian	F	H
2nd Galaxian	G	H
1st Bell	D	H
2nd Bell	H	J
1st Key	H	J
2nd Key	H	K
3rd Key	J	J
4th Key	J	Z
5th Key	K	Z
6th Key	J	Z
7th Key	K	Z
8th Key	K	Z
9th Key	Z	Z