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With the absolutely overwhelming success of Pac Man, the wave
of ripoffs and knockoffs was inevitable. Cat Trax, according to a few sources, was one of
those knockoffs in the arcade. However, I have not been able to find any hard evidence that
this game saw an arcade release, although I am not a hardcore MAME addict either. For the
sake of argument however, we'll assume this one did see at least a limited arcade release.
The only officially released home version of this game was for the Emerson Arcadia 2001, which
with the "success" of that system with the general public may explain why very few people
have heard of this game.
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So you want to know about the gameplay... well, if you've
played any of the 500 bazillion different Pac Man variations, derivatives, ripoffs, bootlegs,
sequels, etc., then you know how to play this one. For all you aliens who just recently landed
on this planet though, the goal is to grab all the dots before you're eaten by the enemies.
And just like in Pac Man, there are powerups as well - grab the randomly appearing fruit in
the center of the board, and your cat turns into a dog catcher's truck to turn the tables on
those mangy mutts. Been there, done that. |
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A lot of the prototypes on this page have been good games that
for one reason or another did not get the chance they deserved. This game, however, is
nothing more than another cookie-cutter Pac Man clone and was probably shelved for this
reason alone. Although in retrospect, they should have licensed this gameplay engine to
Atari and prevented the absolute DISASTER that the official 2600 Pac Man was. Oh well, there's
better than this one... keep reading!
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