What if Mr. Do! and Ms. Pac-Man got together and had a baby? If they did, then the result would probably be something like Ladybug (the 1981 maze game from Universal).

The first time I played this arcade game was at an amusement industry auction in the fall of 2000. This was one of several titles that I did not think were particularly valuable, but still ended up going way out of my price range (the others were Bagman and Operation Wolf). The Ms. Pac-Man/Mr. Do! combination was the first thing to come to mind when I played this game. I later learned that this title predated both games, although it was made by the same manufacturer as Mr. Do!.

In Ladybug you guide a bug through a Pac-Man style maze, eating dots, and avoiding monsters. Collect letters to spell EXTRA for a bonus life (just like in Mr. Do!), and SPECIAL for a extra credit. The maze has rotating doors which are just enough to give the game a slightly different feel than the Pac-Man series.

A proper Ladybug arcade machine will be in a dedicated cabinet (specifically one of the ultra-curvy early Universal ones, Mr. Do!, and many others used this same cabinet). Most games from Universal had no specific sideart, just a painted "Universal" logo, and a couple of colored stripes. This makes it possible to actually convert one Universal title into another one, without any loss in value. The controls are a simple 4-Way joystick mounted in the center of the control panel. Finally, this game uses a standard resolution monitor mounted vertically.

This is not the best game ever made, but it is one of those games you can play over and over again. This would be a good choice for your gameroom (probably at less than half the cost of a Ms. Pac-Man). If you get bored of it, then you can simply swap in the PBCs to another Universal game from the same era, and have yourself a whole new game.

I currently own this game in PCB form, which means I have the circuit board that actually contains the game, but I don't have the machine to put it in.