Deathshadow's Madness
Madness and you, perfect together

Game Logic

The game logic is similar in most respects to the original, though due to the 8:3 reduction in game resolution many elements had to be dropped or faked. For example the animation appeared jerky trying to make the ghosts move faster or slower than PakuPaku, so they are for the most part the same speed. In the original you could take corners faster than the ghosts by clipping the edges of each turn -- this was called "cornering" by most players. It was impractical to recreate that at such a low resolution so instead I gave the player a one pixel "boot in the patoot" at every corner to give a slight advantage.

When the ghost go into 'flee' mode when you eat one of the four super-pellets the ghosts are cut to half speed -- this proved using the 'random movement' logic to be too easy despite being remarkably close to the original game's logic. As such I have changed their flee logic to be a bit more intelligent, making you have to put a bit more effort into hunting them down.

Likewise their pursuit mode logic is a bit different -- for the most part the red ghost still tracks you directly, the magenta ghost tries to get in front of you, the cyan one's accuracy decreases the further away the red one is from you, and the brown one is still a bit... silly... but they've been tweaked with a bit of randomness to make them a hair less predictable. Likewise the movement restructions of not being able to turn upwards at the two center "T" shaped maze section while present, has a 1 in 10 chance of being ignored... just to give players a bit of a surprise every once in a while.

The level progressions follow the original game fairly closely, the entire game speeding up or slowing down depending on the level you are playing. The fastest level speed is pretty quick, even compared to the original so be ready for a bit of a challenge in that department.

Play Now in Your Browser!

  • MS-DOS
    Chrome or Firefox Recommended!. Other browsers may try to run this, but it uses some advanced modern JavaScript to function properly.
  • Commodore 64
    This requires Oracle Java to work properly, which not all browsers will even let you DO in the browser anymore! Laughably, this is the one you're better off trying in IE or Safari.

System Requirements

  • 4.77mhz or faster 8088
  • 128k of RAM
  • (66,560 bytes free in DOS)
  • DOS 2.11 or Higher
  • CGA, Tandy/PcJr, EGA
    or VGA video

...or just run it in DosBox

Supported Sound Cards

PC Speaker, Tandy/PcJr, C/MS Game Blaster, Adlib, MT-32 or other MIDI Device

For more information on running DOS games on modern systems, visit the DOSBox Website

To learn more about on running DOS games in your browser, please visit the JDOSBox Website or it's associated SourceForge project page.