Hey Arcaders!
In the early days after Pac-Man was released to the world, there were a lot of arcade and home console companies that wanted in on the Pac-profit! This series will focus on these lesser known games. weather it’s an original game, or a Pac-bootleg, we will be touching base with these games that Pac-forgot!
Today, we are talking about a game that gets overlooked quite a bit (unless your a collector). And that game is Ladybug.
Ladybug is a game released by Universal in arcades in 1981. The goal of Lady Bug is to eat all “flowers,” hearts, and letters in the maze while avoiding other insects. One of the many things that makes is game so unique is it’s maze.
The maze has walls that rotate when pushed into. This can help or hurt you- turn one, and hide from the bad bugs, or back yourself into a corner between a skull (we’ll get to them in a minute) and a bad bug. Eat the flowers quick, as there is a timer (the green ring going around the maze) and when the green ring does a full rotation, a bad bug escapes out of the middle box. There are four bad bugs in the center box- each one will come out every rotation of the timer. So move quickly because the maze will get busy soon. Your only defense against the bad bugs besides the doors, is the skulls. But these don’t work like a power pellet- oh no. These are deadly to Ladybug too! You have to lure a bad bug into the skull, making them disappear! You only get two. After all the bad bus are out of the center- a vegetable is left behind. Eat it, and it stuns the bad bugs temporarily. but be careful- they are still deadly to the touch!
The letters are a staple of Universal games- spell special or extra. Special gives you a free game, extra is an extra life. Just make sure the letters are the right color (Special is red, extra is yellow.) The hearts give you a point multiplier if touched when they are blue.
So, why didn’t this game do better the arcades? Probably the difficulty level- there’s a lot going on in Ladybug. But- the game saw new popularity when it was released to the Colecovision. The port was Very faithful to the arcade!
There was even a port made for the Atari 2600 by the amazing Champ Games!
Let’s watch this awesome game in action- shall we?
However you can play this game- give it a shot- you’ll love it!
Keep Playin’ Like It’s 1981!
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