When I bought my above average Pac-Man cabinet, I wondered if there was a way to choose between playing Pac-Man or Ms. Pac-Man. My wife said she wanted to play Ms. Pac-Man with the fast mode enabled.

Of course I first ran across the 96-in-1 Multipac. But why in the world would you want to have 500 variations on Pac-Man (plus Pengo)??? Ok, Pengo would be cool, but I don’t want to play “Pac Electric Cowboy”, or “Pac Mr. Roboto”!

Thankfully I found Jason Souza’s 4-in-1 Pac Hack. WOW! This is exactly what I wanted. No more, no less.

Before I could install the 4-in-1 Pac-Man multigame, I had to get the Pac-Man operational. (Note to self: make sure daughter boards are not upside down on day 1!) Since I was already ordering parts from Bob Roberts, I asked him to include the supplies to install this hack. Not including shipping, it cost me $26.50 for the two ROMs, ROM programming, ROM sockets, and wire. So, after flipping the Z80 Buss Sync Controller, replacing 2 RAM chips, and replacing the sound transistor, we were ready for the hack.

Two months pass… while I am waiting on parts for my Space Station Pinball repair I decide it is time to hack my pac.

It was very tedious, and at times difficult to solder the tiny wires to the chip legs. And then there was the worry that I would connect things up wrong, so I quadruple checked every wire. I even used a continuity checker to ensure none of the legs I soldered were accidentally shorted to the leg next to it (there were a couple of those that needed to be corrected).

I am almost embarrassed to share this with you… it looks like my pac board got attacked by a spaghetti monster. But the end result was worth it.