Out of all the SNK arcade classics that were ported to Minis by G1M2, Marvin’s Maze was the least interesting one to me. It clearly looked to be nothing more than a Pac-Man clone, and while Pac-Man is a good game, I always got bored with it after a few levels. So I was loathe to play it, much less review it.

But, when I finally did get around to playing Marvin’s Maze, I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, it really is a lot like Pac-Man. You move a funny little creature around a maze, eating pellets and avoiding (and occasionally turning the tables on) monsters. But the differences really do make, well, a difference. And, it’s further helped by an option G1M2 added to the emulator, not found in their other ports.

The differences are threefold. Firstly, the maze inhabited by Marvin has two different levels. The game uses pseudo-3D isometric graphics, with one level on the bottom of the screen and another at the top. Marvin can move between them using chutes at the corners of the maze.

The maze also has gaps in it, with one-way platforms that Marvin can ride. While it mostly makes it harder to get through the maze without being eaten (if you are on the wrong side of the gap, where the platform isn’t), sometimes you can turn the tables on your harassers, luring them to a fatal fall.

The last difference, and probably the biggest, is how Marvin normally deals with the monsters (robots, actually). Instead of turning them blue and gaining the ability to eat the monsters, Marvin gets a gun. Or rather, he presumably already has a gun, but he picks up bullets. When you guide him over one of the power pills, he changes color. He can now take aim at his pursuers and blast them, with the bullet going through each opponent, potentially hitting others behind him. The more you kill with one shot, the more you score (again, like how in Pac-Man, you’d score more for eating multiple ghosts in a row).

Pac-Man was mostly about memorizing patterns. Here, the gameplay is more tactical, more reactive. Instead of constantly fleeing for your life, here you are able to take matters into your own, well, Marvin’s own, hands.

That’s not to say the game is easy. It’s not. The maze is complicated, and you can end up trapped in a dead end quite easily. Here comes the second thing that makes the game a lot of fun: there is an Immortal option in the emulator settings that gives you an unlimited amount of lives.

With the notable exception of initial versions of Star Castle, old arcade games were pretty hard. So unless you were really good at video games, or invested a lot of time in learning how to play just one, you just didn’t see many stages or levels beyond the first few. Some games solved this by letting you continue, but that wasn’t popular until the mid-’80s or so. So, it’s very nice to be able to keep on playing with an infinite amount of Marvins.

The game features the other options found in G1M2 arcade-to-Mini ports—changing the controls, stretching the screen, and saving the game state. It’s a simple game, so controls don’t matter much. Stretching the screen actually seems to shrink it a bit, because when you pick the normal view, the bottom and top of the screen is cut off. You don’t miss much, though, and the graphics are sharper. You also get some cabinet art.

While the save game state function isn’t as useful here as in other games, because you can choose to have an infinite number of lives, it is good for saving your progress. While there isn’t a lot of level variation, the maze does change shape, and I would swear that once I got past round 30 or so, I started seeing some I hadn’t before.

The graphics are detailed, if a little drab. It’s small and a little hard to see, at least on a PSP. The sound is forgettable; as I write this, I really can’t remember what it sounded like at all, despite several hours of playing it.

Marvin’s Maze is one of those games that really isn’t that deep and doesn’t make a very good first impression, but just happens to be a lot of fun if you stick with it for a while. The Immortal mode that gives you infinite lives almost turns it into a puzzle game, where you simply have to beat each level without too much frustration. Just clearing levels gives you a sense of progression and is a decent time waster.

Still, compared with more modern games we’ve seen in the Minis program, Marvin and his game just don’t stack up in terms of features. Perhaps a Marvin’s Maze Championship Edition?

6.5/10