Munch Man(TI-99/4A) FAQ/Walkthrough version 1.0.0 by schultw.andrez@sbcglobal.net(anti spam spoonerism) By the way, horlchoo has a walkthrough on YouTube which shows stuff that's rather hard to express succinctly. Go see it! Levels 1-9 http://youtube.com/watch?v=YXAnt2WK2Xs Levels 10-20 http://youtube.com/watch?v=85M-s-uuKmM ================================ OUTLINE 1. INTRODUCTION 2. CONTROLS 3. MAPS AND STRATEGIES AND LEVEL BASICS 4. LEVEL BY LEVEL 5. CHEATS 6. VERSIONS/CREDITS ================================ 1. INTRODUCTION Munch Man was a big reason I liked to go to a friend's house. Well, he was nice, too, but man did I like that game! It was Pac-Man, where you put down links instead of gobbling dots, and even better, the enemies changed as you went through levels! So it was sort of a puzzle, too, but nothing too nerdy, because you'd get killed if you didn't figure it out soon enough. I wanted a TI just for this game, and I never got one, but through the miracles of emulation I had a chance to take a look at this game again. I figured it'd be fun and I didn't need to write a FAQ about it or anything, but then SBAllen put a message about how GameFAQs had new platforms. So I found an online cheat code and got to work. Well, what passes for work Fridays at my office. Cool links: http://www.videogamehouse.net/munchmanual2.jpg (front image) http://www.harmlesslion.com/cgi-bin/showprog.cgi?search=Classic99(download TI99 emulator, and you can pull Munchman down from the options) 2. CONTROLS You just use the arrow keys to move around. You can reverse without loss of time. There is no way to freeze, not that you'd want to, besides running into a wall. You can also lead your next move. This is critical when enemies are as fast as you. Beware that if you and an enemy reach a power pill at the same time, you lose. You can exit your starting place from either direction, but you can't return. 3. MAPS AND STRATEGIES AND LEVEL BASICS ............................ * . . * ... . ........ . ... . . . . . . . . . . . . ................................ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....--uu--..... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ............................ * . . . . * ........ . . ........ . . ... ... . . ...... . . ...... . . . . . . ..... .............. ..... Wait a while at start of level, weird music plays. Eventually you are kicked out to face the level, but it takes some time. If you must pause on an emulator, use the GUI. The map is the same up til level 20 and then it inverts and you have no boundaries. So you just have to grab the now-pellets as you see fit. You probably have a pattern by then. If you win level 20, the game resets and the enemies go faster. There are 250 dots and 4 power pills(10 and 50) for a total of 2700 points per board. You get 100/200/400/800 for each ghost you get while you've got a power pill. You can chain power pills to retain your bonus, which is actually a good idea on the later levels, But more importantly, if you are nearing the end of a board, you can tell how many links you have left and maybe know where to look. Because you need a score of **00 to advance to the next round. The narrow connectors with just 1 dot/link at the bottom are the trickiest as they may look like you connected them. Those are the first you want to check for, and generally you'll have clumps of 3 to look for. While on later levels you may just try to complete the level to avoid this confusion, if you are troubled, score tracking can help a lot. You probably won't be backtracking much, either, but if you do, remember where you stopped. Also remember where you got killed. You get Extra guys every 10000. This is important to know because you can lose a guy every 4 levels and still break even. On the later ones you'll be lucky to gobble one enemy even though you go a bit faster than they do. They still move chaotically, and you will just want to chomp out the tough bits with the first couple of power pills. Start dancing around for an extra hundred points and get burned later--even the 800 point guy, if there is an 8% chance you get killed, it's not worth it. Some messages appear randomly after each board you win. "go !!" "link it" "very good" "play on" "move fast" "good work" "good play" "your turn" "nice game" 4. LEVEL BY LEVEL 1) whorls 2) ufos 3) juju squares 4) eyeballs 5) moving mouths 6) raining frustums 7) dust balls 8) birds 9) spinning sticks 10) tornados 11) X's 12) walking spade shapes 13) bouncy coils 14) static bulbs 15) turnstiles (a lot less TI power up time) 16) walking hats 17) spinning u's 18) dolls 19) jellyfish 20) spinning spikes, board is inverted from the usual, but the boundaries disappear and reappear On level 1 it is not too bad to pick up all the bad guys with each power pill. You can use standard Pac-Man tactics. Start by going right and along the top row to the left. This is sort of universal. You can do it all the time and not get caught, and in fact you will need to do so to get away from enemies at a later level. The enemies try to go to the top but get caught in the upside down U. Then you can hook down before the power pill and clear out what you can. You will want to try to avoid the big long row with the tunnels at the top, since you can clear that out after eating your final power pill. However, if you need to go there to save a life, do so. The enemies last so long that it should be no problem to eat them all up. Just concentrate on one at a time, and of course you can wait for an enemy ti getnear before killing the final one. As you start you may find you forget a lot of links, and the easiest ones based on the map are discussed in the strategy sections. In general it's a good idea to take out whatever vertical bits you can when the board is relatively empty, as they are hard to see when the board is full. The basic pattern for clearing out areas is as follows. You're going to make misjudgements, and the enemies move randomly so everything won't go perfectly, so just keep moving on: * Upper left, you may wish to take out first later if an enemy hassles you, but if you can leave it and pick off the left rows, that is a big boost. It can be used to take out the U above where you start. * Lower left power pill, take out the zigzag passages in the center bottom and as many narrow vertical bits as you can before getting to the lower right. Get the vertical bits first, as they are easy to overlook. Prepare yourself for later! * Lower right, take out the rest of the bottom. That includes the tunnel. Go up a column you didn't get through and try to clear out any of the other small squares around the center. * Upper right, for anything remaining and for the long left/right run at the end. You can probably leave about 200 points on the board. But you want to make sure they are concentrated near the top. If you want, you can even leave the loop above you for the final bit. * you can leave a column at the end--horlchoo's youtube walkthrough often leaves the far right column as you can grab the UR pill, go across the top tunnels, and go down to win. And if you lose a guy, then head immediately for the first power pill you can get to. Don't try to snip off a few extra links. The enemies get out of their pens too quickly. You'll have enough time to clear the board. And don't wait too long to get a power pill. You should have a nice rhythm--when the screen flashes red, gobble up anything stray that is really close, then move on ASAP. You don't get style points in this game. For level 1, go left and down, and if you have the space(you should on the early levels) you can go back right up right up and clear out the nasty little narrow area above where you start. Whenever someone starts to follow you, head for a power pill. Each power pill should be roughly associated with an area--and you should make an effort to clean everything there. You want to try to avoid repetitive moves, so leave the long left-right for last. However you may wish to kill a few enemies--beware that every 3rd level you won't have much gobbling time. I generally choose not to go after a monster even if he is pretty close, because it takes away valuable time better used for gobbling pills at your fast speed. If you can knock out a few enemies, that is probably a good defensive maneuver, but don't do anything unless you're very lucky, and don't lose sight of your goal, which is to complete levels quickly and efficiently. This holds even truer on level 11 when the enemies are slightly faster than you, even if you make exact turns, so you really don't want to mess around trying to gobble them. If they are just behind you, by all means turn and grab them--the second you get as your guy eats them is useful for strategizing where to go next. Really though you want to avoid backtracking, and while you have to do some of that to complete the bottom bits, I really recommend you not go after enemies so that you are forced to backtrack majorly. If they are somewhere with pills, then you can take them out okay. But don't get into a cat-and- mouse game where they turn enough corners to frustrate and distract you. By level 11 you should almost be proud of just scoring the minimum. And that continues til level 20. The same strategies apply here, but your big handicap is running into a wall. So again you want to knock out the curvy bits first. If you've got a pattern, use it. It's extra important to clear out a whole area once you've started, because getting back to that last few little shapes of Texas(and are those cool dots or what?) is impossible even if you've mostly memorized the board. If an enemy is on your tail, they will get you. 5. CHEATS Push 2 to get to Munch Man at the boot disk. Then hold down SHIFT once the new graphics appear, then 838. End of FAQ Proper ================================ 6. VERSIONS/CREDITS 1.0.0: sent to GameFAQs 6/15/2008, complete Thanks to CJayC for GameFAQs and SBAllen for adding the TI as a platform. Thanks to GameFAQs for being, well, THERE. Thanks to the usual GameFAQs gang, current and emeritus. They know who they are, and you should, too, because they get/got some SERIOUS writing done. Good people too--bloomer, falsehead, Sashanan, Masters, Retro, Snow Dragon/Brui5ed Ego, ZoopSoul, War Doc, Brian Sulpher, AdamL, odino, JDog, Lagoona, Da Hui and others I forgot. OK, even Hydrophant in his current not- yet-banned message board incarnation. I am not part of his gang, but I want him to be part of mine. Thanks to Danny Nichols for putting up with me loving this game too much at his house, so long ago. And for kicking my butt at Indoor Soccer. And for showing me the TI99 version of Decathlon. Good times! Thanks to the creator(s) of classic99. Thanks to horlchoo on YouTube for his video walkthrough, which will probably teach you more about how to be REALLY good at this game than the FAQ. I wrote what I could, then checked to see if he had anything I obviously missed.