Page:Atari v. North American Philips Consumer Electronics.pdf/6

 and rotates ninety degrees every two or three seconds, but serves the same purpose as the corral in PAC–MAN. The scoring table is located below the maze and, as in PAC–MAN, has places on the left and right for scores for two players. But instead of simply registering the high score in the middle, the K. C. Munchkin game displays in flashing pink and orange a row of question marks where the high scorer can register his or her name.

The gobbler in K. C. Munchkin initially faces the viewer and appears as a round blue-green figure with horns and eyes. The gobbler normally has an impish smile, but when a monster attacks it, its smile appropriately turns to a frown. As it moves about the maze, the gobbler shows a somewhat diamond-shaped profile with a V-shaped mouth which rapidly opens and closes in a manner similar to PAC–MAN’s gobbler. A distinctive “gobbling” noise also accompanies this movement. When the gobbler stops, it turns around to face the viewer with another grin. If captured by a monster, the gobbler also folds back and disappears in a star-burst. At the start of each play, this character is located immediately above the corral. If successful in consuming the last dot, the munchkin turns to the viewer and chuckles.

K. C. Munchkin’s three ghost monsters appear similar in shape and movement to their PAC–MAN counterparts. They have round bodies (approximately equal in size to the gobbler) with two short horns or antennae, eyes, and three appendages on the bottom. The eyes are not as detailed as those of the PAC–MAN monsters, but they are uniquely similar in that they also “look” in the direction in which the monster is moving. Although slightly longer, the “legs” also move in a centipede-like manner as the monster roams about the maze. The similarity becomes even more pronounced when the monsters move vertically because their antennae disappear and their bodies assume the more bell jar-like shape of the PAC–MAN monsters. Moreover, the monsters are initially stationed inside the corral (albeit in a piggyback rather than a side-by-side arrangement) and exit into the maze as soon as play commences.

K. C. Munchkin’s expression of the role reversal also parallels that in PAC–MAN. When the gobbler consumes one of the power capsules, the vulnerable monsters turn purple and reverse direction, moving at a slightly slower speed. If caught by the gobbler, a monster “vanishes”: its body disappears and only white “eyes” and “feet” remain to indicate its presence. Instead of returning directly to the corral to regenerate, the ghost-like figure continues to wander about the maze, but does not affect the play. Only if the rotating corral happens to open up toward the monster as it travels one of the adjacent passageways will the monster re-enter the corral to be regenerated. This delay in regeneration allows the gobbler more time to clear the maze of dots. When the period of vulnerability is about to end, each monster flashes its original color as a warning.

There are only twelve dots in K. C. Munchkin as opposed to over two hundred dots in PAC–MAN. Eight of those dots are white; the other four are power capsules, distinguished by their constantly changing color and the manner in which they blink. In K. C. Munchkin, the dots are randomly spaced, whereas in PAC–MAN, the dots are uniformly spaced. Furthermore, in K. C.