Ms. MIDP-Man: History

Back in 2000 I built a fairly simple Pac-Man clone for mobile phones, as an experiment to see if it was possible to create an entertaining Java game despite the very limited MIDP 1.0 standard. And it was, sort of. I called my game "MIDP-Man."

Now that the much more useful MIDP 2.0 standard is here, I thought I should try the same thing again. Not to test what can be done, however, but rather to show people how it can be done, because there is a terrible shortage of good MIDP 2.0 games with source code on the web. Taking a step up, I decided to build Ms. Pac-Man this time -- widely regarded as far superior to the original -- and naturally I would call it "Ms. MIDP-Man."

I hasten to point out that my version is by no means an exact duplicate. Aside from the adaptation to a (normally) smaller screen -- which meant that I had to reduce the score area at the top -- I've skipped a number of details. For example, the bonus fruit is worth the same (500 points) on all levels, there are no intermissions and the ghosts are a bit dumber than one would expect. As the saying goes, I've left this as an exercise for the readers.

To further encourage independent development, I created a simple maze editor, which you can find on the Ingredients page. As long as you stay within certain confinements, you can build new playing fields with almost unlimited variety.