Welcome to the walkthrough for Ms. Pac-Man. If you're not very good at any sort of Pac-Man game, don't worry; you'll be able to get all the achievements after having enough experience with the game. Being an old score-based game, there are a few important tips to know on the next page before you start. For this set of achievements, you'll mostly just have to collect fruit as you progress towards Round 21. There's another achievement that's particularly challenging that you should really only attempt after you've reached Round 21 (so you're more familiar with the game), and that'll be on it's own page.
To start, the four ghosts behave in fairly predictable patterns. Blinky, the red ghost, chases directly after you. Pinky, obviously the pink ghost, will try to get in front of you. The combination of these two alone is already pretty condemning in certain situations. Inky, the blue ghost, follows the pattern of any of the two aforementioned ghosts, or will mimic the orange ghost, Sue. Sue is really stupid, and just wanders off aimlessly. Sue is also the last one out of center stage, which highlights her slow, aloof personality. Despite these patterns, however, the ghosts' AI has been improved in this game since the original Pac-Man released, so their movement will be a bit more sporadic than usual. Understanding these patterns does still help, though.
You can set your base lives higher in the game's Options menu, as well as lower the amount of points you need for an extra life. There's no downside to making the game easier for yourself, so you may as well edit these in the settings to make things less frustrating. Another, more important setting is a Round Select feature, which will allow you to start from any stage that you've previously been on before.
There are quite a few progress-based achievements in this title that are given to you for eating certain fruits. For the sake of achievements, you'll only have to get to the end of Round 21 before you can stop. Once again, make sure that you use the Round selection feature to make this a lot easier. Since this isn't exactly Dig Dug or Galaga, there isn't a whole lot to say for these levels, but the design does change every once in a while, so pictures of these designs are included as a heads-up. The game's rounds are also divided into "acts" of a story, which you'll be able to see little snippets of after every couple or rounds or so.
Act 1: They Meet
For each round, there's a specific type of fruit that appears after you eat a certain number of pellets. Round 1 starts you off with a Cherry. There are two of these available at their own pellet milestones, so you've got two chances to munch on one. If you die with a fruit on screen, it's gone from the round for good, so you'll have to replay a round later if you didn't get the chance to eat a fruit tied to a specific achievement. Round 2 has the Strawberry, which also rewards an achievement upon eating it.
CherryEat the Cherries that appear after eating a set number of Pac-Dots!
StrawberryEat the Strawberry that appears after eating a set number of Pac-Dots!
Act 2: The Chase
The map's going to look a bit different now, and it's colored blue instead of pink, which you can see above. Round 3 contains the Orange, whereas Round 4 has a Pretzel floating around. That's not a fruit, obviously, but every other food item is. Round 5 has a plain and simple Apple, objectively the best fruit ever. By now, you should've noticed that the ghosts are a lot more agile and far more resilient to Super Pellet power-ups than before. Don't worry about losing all your lives; you can just quit to the main menu and re-select any round you've at least seen, and you'll have all five lives back. You'll get an achievement for beating Round 5, but that's just the start of your progression in this game.
OrangeEat the Orange that appears after eating a set number of Pac-Dots!
PretzelEat the Pretzel that appears after eating a set number of Pac-Dots!
AppleEat the Apple that appears after eating a set number of Pac-Dots!
Clear Round 5Clear the beginner level by completing the first 5 rounds!
Act 3: Junior
The third act's map has a nice fall color palette going on, and there are even more small twists and turns to clean up. Round 6 features the Pear, followed by the Banana in Round 7. That'll be the last specific fruit you have to eat for an achievement; good thing too, because now the fruits that spawn from each level starting from Round 8 will be purely random from the selection you've already seen. Now you can just focus on beating the levels.
PearEat the Pear that appears after eating a set number of Pac-Dots!
BananaEat the Banana that appears after eating a set number of Pac-Dots!
Act 4
Things from here on out are going to be noticeably tougher. You might even have to reset your lives every time you finish around now. On the bright side, you're just about halfway there. There are only three different cutscenes in the same, so you'll be seeing the third one at the end of each act from now on.
Act 5
You're almost done with the game now. These last few levels are pretty brutal. Don't feel bad about resetting your lives; you'll really need them to get through each of these remaining rounds. By Round 16, I actually lost all five of my lives and had to retry from the beginning of the round without intentionally doing so. As for Round 17, the Super Pellets won't have any visible effect on the ghosts at all, save for making them change direction.
Act 6
The map up to Round 21 will be the same as it was for Rounds 10-13, just in a different color. As you'd expect, Round 18 will be the easiest of this set of four, and you'll find it increasingly difficult to pass every next Round until you finally finish Round 21. You'll probably find going through this final stretch similar to Act 5.
Clear Round 21Clear the advanced level by completing the first 21 rounds!
Perfect Round
In order to get a "perfect" round in, you need to eat all four ghosts at once four times (with every Super Pellet in the round). It's actually not too hard to pull off; it just requires a bit of planning and luck. The best Round to do this in is Round 1, of course.
Start off by eating up the pellets just to the northwest on the lower half of the stage, then continue eating the ones on the southern half of the stage until the first Cherry shows up. You won't need to eat it, but its appearance is a sign that you're on the right track. Sue takes a while to get out of the center, but when she does, try to get to a Super Pellet while all four ghosts are fairly close together. Eat them all in one go, of course, and then continue eating pellets. It's okay to die for this run as long as it isn't during a Super Pellet boost, but if you don't eat all four ghosts during one of those, you may as well restart.
After eating enough regular pellets, the second Cherry will appear. Continue using the remaining Super Pellets to get x4 combos on the ghosts, and after doing this four times total in the same level, you'll earn your achievement after finishing the level.
3 GhostsEat three ghosts in succession after eating a Power Pellet!
All GhostsEat all four ghosts in succession after eating a Power Pellet!
PerfectEat all ghosts four times within a stage!
