262. Space Chaser (Taito, Arcade (PS2), 1979)

When I laid eyes on Space Chaser, I immediately thought of Sega's Head On, another arcade maze game from 1979, as it looks very visually similar. I was surprised when I first played Head On, because I did not expect a pre-Pac-Man maze game to be any fun, yet I had a good time with Head On, even though it's a very simple game. Space Chaser, on the other hand, answers the question "what if a less talented team had made Head On?"

Instead of the 2 cars racing opposite directions setup of Head On, Space Chaser is much more Pac-Man-like, as you have to navigate small single screen maze, collecting all of the dots (the game even refers to them as dots) before the purple missile that is chasing you catches up to you. It's certainly not an exact blueprint of Pac-Man, though, as Space Chaser has you moving at the same speed as your pursuer, but you have a limited fuel supply that you can use to move faster with the only button.

That said, when about a quarter of the dots remain, the missile chasing you dramatically speeds up, so that you can no longer outrun it at your base speed. Getting through the first level of Space Chaser requires you to either outsmart the missile (which is challenging as it generally moves on the most direct path to you), or save up all of your fuel for that ending speed increase. After a handful of tries, I managed to finish the first level by the skin of my teeth. The second level promptly introduces an additional pink missile to chase you around, more than doubling the already high skill required to clear it.

The worst part about Space Chaser is how sluggish your ship feels while taking corners (especially compared to Pac-Man). The best part about Space Chaser is that when a missile does end up hitting you, the calm blue walls of the maze screech into a shocking red as you explode and chunks of debris take out the maze walls.

2/5, a basic sluggish maze game with a cool death animation