PacMan 7800 actually has a Hard Mode I doubt PacMan Plus even knew about.

[Dragon Princess Yushira]

Sorry if this is known already, but while one of my sisters was playing the game for a future Hombrew Youtube Exposure episode that I run in my blog here and the initial emulator (older version of Bizhawk) we use for 7800 didn't support homebrew 7800 games so she played it on MESS and it was a fine challenging game with a bunch of tricky turns and such to make but the recording of the game went to shit after such a good run. MESS only recorded 3 seconds of AVI. Then after another good run this time using INP. The emulator wouldn't play back. Now fast forward to using the newest version of Bizhawk and it supports homebrew and Pac Man looked totally different. This is probably the one everyone has been playing on EMU7800 or on a actual 7800.

 

Notable differences in the MESS version: 3 in/out portals on each side, lone dots inside each middle portal, lone dots on the bottom of each side, and you had to make tricky S-turns to go straight. So if you think you are a pro on the normal Pac Man 7800, try it on MESS because its more or less an unintentional hard mode.

[Trebor]

Sorry if this is known already, but while one of my sisters was playing the game for a future Hombrew Youtube Exposure episode that I run in my blog here and the initial emulator (older version of Bizhawk) we use for 7800 didn't support homebrew 7800 games so she played it on MESS and it was a fine challenging game with a bunch of tricky turns and such to make but the recording of the game went to shit after such a good run. MESS only recorded 3 seconds of AVI. Then after another good run this time using INP. The emulator wouldn't play back. Now fast forward to using the newest version of Bizhawk and it supports homebrew and Pac Man looked totally different. This is probably the one everyone has been playing on EMU7800 or on a actual 7800.

 

Notable differences in the MESS version: 3 in/out portals on each side, lone dots inside each middle portal, lone dots on the bottom of each side, and you had to make tricky S-turns to go straight. So if you think you are a pro on the normal Pac Man 7800, try it on MESS because its more or less an unintentional hard mode.

MESS is behaving just like the real hardware.

 

For the change effect on the maze:

 

Left Difficulty Switch = B - Left Position = Original Pac-Man maze

 

 

 

Left Difficulty Switch = A - Right Position = New Puck-X maze

 

 

If BizHawk (EMU7800 - which BizHawk receives its 7800 core from), supports proper difficulty switch configurations, the same should be possible there as well.