Super Pac-Man represented a radical departure from the classic Pac-Man gameplay. Sure, the traditional "eat things while running for your life" style was still there, but it had been severely changed. Instead of eating bland yellow pellets, Pac-Man had to eat different types of food for his basic sustenance, like apples, bananas, and donuts.

Power pellets still turned the tables on his attacking ghosts, but there was an additional power-up as well. The "super" pellets made Pac-Man triple his size and gain a tremendous boost of speed. While gigantic, Pac-Man could run right through the ghosts in the maze, but neither he nor the ghosts would take damage. The second major change was the inclusion of doors that had to be unlocked by eating certain keys. When a key was consumed, more parts of the maze could be traveled through, though it was easy to forget to eat a key and be trapped against a door with a ghost blocking the only way out. When Pac-Man ingested a super pellet, he could eat the doors themselves, forever opening them and no longer having any need for the keys. It could be argued that the super pellets made Pac-Man too powerful, because he could race around the maze wherever he wanted, impervious to any and all damage. But the game was still fun to play, much more so than Pac-Man Plus.

Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man Pinball was released by Bally in May of 1982, and over 10,000 of the machines were produced. The pinball was standard fare that we all know and love, but it had a Pac-Man theme: You could enter a Pac-Maze and earn extra balls by spelling out P-A-C-M-A-N in true traditional pinball style. Other than that, it was typical pinball: You got three balls and had to get as many points as possible. If a ball fell between the two lowest flippers at the bottom of the machine, you lost a turn. Although this Pac-Man pinball game nowhere near achieved the success of the original game, it was still an enjoyable title.

A hybrid of an arcade game and a pinball game, Baby Pac-Man was probably one of the more ingenious creations that Pac-Man inspired. You controlled Baby Pac-Man on a small dot matrix-type screen in traditional fashion. You ran around munching on dots and escaping from the usual invasion of ghosts. But unlike Baby's parents (Baby Pac-Man's sex was indeterminate), Baby Pac had no power pellets to assist him (or her). Instead, Baby Pac could flee down one of two tunnels that led to... the pinball field. From there, you would assume control of the pinball machine's flippers and bounce the new steel Baby Pac around.

Various power-ups could be accumulated for the return to the digital playing field, such as fruits, speed boosts, and temporary energizers. Death (and the loss of either a Baby Pac or a steel Pac) would result from ramming a ghost or watching as a steel Pac slipped between flippers into the endless void of the pinball machine.

Baby Pac-Man was a moderate success for its time, mainly due to the hybrid nature of its gameplay. Pac-Man wizards had a new challenge, and pinball junkies had to learn the intricacies of running through a 2D maze with death at almost every turn.