Incredibly prophetic how much of the elements Super Mario Bros. would later incorporate, from the eight-world, four-stage structure, to the lakitu bombers present in the form of the Ghosts flying in airplanes and throwing miniature versions of themselves. You control Pac-Man with only three controls: Left, right, and jump, while double-tapping on a button would make him run, and in that sense jump higher. You can find occasional power pellets which, like in the classic arcade game, lets you munch ghosts for a limited time, and some parts of the stage even include secret power-ups such as a helmet that protects you from mini-ghosts.
The jumping is the most responsive and controlable that has been than in any other platformer, and each of the stages bring a new environment: Whether it's a straightforward path, a mountainside with many pits, deserts with quick sand, maze-like castles where you need to find keys and it gets dark, or (the much dreaded) ponds, where you have to use springboards and later button-mash on the right-side button to stay afloat(which is NOT COOL).
Barring the awful choice of the pond stages, this game is truly a silent masterpiece, and had it done something much more than recycling its initial stages into the 70% of the rest of the game, many people would place a firm paperweight questioning if SMB1 is really the whole inovator it's cracked up to be or not.
But no seriously, screw the ponds.
One final thing: Play the Japanese version! The graphics in the US version was slightly altered to give Pac-Man a look more reminiscent of his US cartoon, but the Japanese version is also slower-paced, which is very helpful and makes the game that much more comfortable to play. The US version is so sped-up that the faster gravity just does not sit right.
NES: The NES port came out too little, too late, in a post-SMB era when this type of handling platformers was already outdated(and it still relies on button-mashing A and B to move), and on a graphical level it is laughably reduced, although its general structure is competent. If you have the arcade version, there's no use bothering.
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The earlier levels are frantic fun in kind of a Wonder Boy/Adventure Island kind of way, where you try to keep your speed as high as possible while trying to dodge obstacles. Later on it shifts to more precision platforming, which handles a little funky since the time limits are so tight and Pac-man moves on this weird pseudo-tile-based system; taking one step in any direction moves you a fixed distance, but platforms and in-air movement aren't locked to discrete positions, so you actually have more fine control over your x-y position in midair than you do on the ground. It's not impossible to get used to, but it sure is a weird setup. Honestly I probably like this more than the first Wonder Boy though, despite coming out more than a year and a half earlier.