Arcade: Universal 1981
Home Version: Champ Games 2006
Arcade Description: In this Pac-Man-esque game, you are a little Lady Bug working her way through a maze. Her goal is to gobble up little flowers and avoid dangerous skulls. There are four enemy bugs in hot pursuit trying to stop her. If she moves quickly, she can trick her enemies into colliding with the poisonous skulls. She can also push little "turnstiles" that make up the maze and block their paths. When all enemy bugs are released into the maze, a bonus veggie appears in their pen. She can snag it and stun her enemies for a few seconds. Along the way, she can also gobble up multi-colored letters which spell out "EXTRA" (for an extra Lady Bug), "SPECIAL" (for a Vegetable Buffet), and Score Multipliers.
Pros: The whole game is one giant pro.
Cons: N/A!
The Scorecard - How Does It Match Up?
(all categories are out of a possible 10 with 1 being poor and 10 being excellent)
Graphics/Animation: 10. When I popped this game into my 2600, I nearly had a heart attack. All characters are here and look just like their arcade counterpart.
Sound Effects and Music: 10. Absolute perfection. This thing sounds like the arcade game. These are the best sound effects and music I have ever heard replicated on this system.
Levels: 10. Level for level, this is it. Right down to bonus screens.
Control: 10. Beautiful. Smooth as silk.
Scoring: 10. As far as I can tell, the scoring is right on.
The Wrap Up: 50 out of 50! JUST LIKE THE REAL ARCADE GAME!
A Few Parting Shots: Quite the column this time 'round. Coleco often gets a bad wrap (and rightly so) for many of its home conversions for Atari. Zaxxon, Donkey Kong, and Donkey Kong Junior leap to mind... But, y'know as time went on, they got a little better- Front Line is pretty good and when Looping was discovered a few years ago. I was impressed. Mr. Do is a sort of transition title. It's an improvement, but still needed an extra push. Ironically, LadyBug was to be released for Atari by Coleco and never surfaced. Here we are, 20 plus years later, and Champ Games blesses the Classic Gaming world with, what I consider, the hands-down, absolute best home conversion I have ever played on the 2600. This thing is great! Highly playable. Lots of time and care went into this cart and it shows. Keep 'em coming, guys! Give us Tron, Mappy, a playable Tempest, or some other gem we could have used back then!