I have always found it to be superior, even back in the early 80s... I have always preferred Ms Pacman over regular Pacman..
Not that I didn’t like Pacman, but the same maze over and over and over to me just wasn’t as much fun... I have developed more respect for it as an old man, but honestly as a kid, Ms Pacman was by far my favorite of the Pac Man games... still is to this day.
In fact, Ms Pacman was originally designed to be an aftermarket upgrade to pacman to make it more fun, but the developers took a big check from the manufacturer and turned pacman into a girl, and walla.. Ms Pacman... can read about it here:
“Because of its design, Ms. Pac-Man still operated as an after-market add-on board–even during its production run. So Midway essentially sold a copy of Pac-Man every time they sold a copy of Ms. Pac-Man. In that way, Namco still got the same Pac-Man royalty on every unit of Ms. Pac-Man that sold.”
...
“Every Ms. Pac-Man ever made has a Pac-Man board in it and a Ms. Pac-Man add-on, the same way Super Missile Attack was an add-on. If you were to remove that board, you’d get Pac-Man. Our intention was, once we went into production, that it would eventually be integrated onto one board, but things moved so fast that the entire [standalone] production run of Ms. Pac-Man was done with Pac-Man boards and Ms. Pac-Man enhancement kits.”
...
So... technically, Ms. Pac-Man is transgendered
Interesting back story!
I had forgotten that Ms. Pac Man had different mazes versus Pac Man’s single repeated maze. Thinking back I do seem to remember it being more fun to play.