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Pac-Man Traditional Cache

Hidden : 1/26/2013
Difficulty:
1.5 out of 5
Terrain:
1 out of 5

Size: Size:   micro (micro)

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Geocache Description:

Ready Player 2
Pac-Man has lost his second life, but the game is still going strong! He still has 1 life left.


Play Pac-Man!

The player controls Pac-Man through a maze, eating pac-dots or pellets. When all pac-dots are eaten, Pac-Man is taken to the next stage. Between some stages one of three intermission animations plays. Four enemies (Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde) roam the maze, trying to catch Pac-Man. If an enemy touches Pac-Man, a life is lost. When all lives have been lost, the game ends. Near the corners of the maze are four larger, flashing dots known as power pellets that provide Pac-Man with the temporary ability to eat the enemies. The enemies turn deep blue, reverse direction and usually move more slowly. When an enemy is eaten, its eyes remain and return to the center box where it is regenerated in its normal color. Blue enemies flash white to signal that they are about to become dangerous again and the length of time for which the enemies remain vulnerable varies from one stage to the next, generally becoming shorter as the game progresses. In later stages, the enemies go straight to flashing, bypassing blue, which means that they can only be eaten for a short amount of time, although they still reverse direction when a power pellet is eaten; in even later stages, the ghosts do not become edible (i.e., they do not change color and still make Pacman lose a life on contact), but they still reverse direction.

The 256th "Split-Screen" level cannot be completed due to a software bug



Pac-Man was designed to have no ending – as long as the player keeps at least one life, he or she should be able to play the game indefinitely. However, a bug keeps this from happening: Normally, no more than seven fruit are displayed at the bottom of the screen at any given time. But when the internal level counter, which is stored in a single byte (8 bits), reaches 255, the subroutine that draws the fruit erroneously "rolls over" this number to zero, causing it to try to draw 256 fruit instead of the usual seven. This corrupts the bottom of the screen and the entire right half of the maze with seemingly random symbols, making it impossible to eat enough dots to beat the level. Because this effectively ends the game, this "split-screen" level is often referred to as the "kill screen". Emulators and code analysis have revealed what would happen should this 255th level be cleared: The fruit and intermissions would restart at level 1 conditions, but the enemies would retain their higher speed and invulnerability to power pellets from the higher stages.



Many travelers arrive in Regina and stay for the night in one of the downtown hotels. Some of them are avid cachers and would like the challenge to find a cache or two while in the city. This cache has been placed in the downtown area just for them. Bewarned that the high buildings "will play havoc" with your GPS signal thus affecting your degree of accuracy.

All good cachers will always carry a writing implement and also replace the cache "exactly" where they found it!

 

Congrats to j_s_e_a on being FTF!!!

 

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Sebz TM, lbh pna fnqyl frr gur abj-inpnag ybg jurer "Jbaqreynaq Ragregnvazrag Prager" nepnqr hfrq gb fgnaq...

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)