Lady Bug is an arcade video game developed and distributed by Universal in 1981.
It’s a maze game.
In Lady Bug you guide a lady bug through a Pac-Man style maze, eating dots, and avoiding enemy insects.
You lose a life if you run into a skull or get eaten by an enemy insect.
You can collect letters to spell EXTRA for a bonus life (just like in Mr. Do!), and SPECIAL for an extra credit. The maze has rotating doors which are just enough to give the game a slightly different feel than the Pac-Man series.
Technical:
A proper Lady Bug 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 side art, 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 joystick is mounted in the center of the control panel. Finally, this game uses a standard resolution monitor mounted vertically.
Trivia:
Lady Bug was released in October 1981 in Japan and in December 1981 in the USA.
This game contains unused graphics for a large dinosaur.
Alessandro Laini holds the official record for this game with 4,102,830 points.
A bootleg was made in 1983 by TAI DLI on the “Galaxian” hardware.
A bootleg of this game is known as Coccinelle.
Scoring:
Eating a flower : 10 points x score multiplier value.
If you collect a heart : 100 points x score multiplier value.
Collecting a yellow letter : 300 points x score multiplier value.
Collecting a red letter : 800 points x score multiplier value.
Bonus vegetable : 1,000 points for the cucumber on level one, increasing by 500 points per level, up to a maximum value of 9,500 for the horseradish on level 18 onwards.
It’s perfectly emulated by MAME.
Lady Bug infos:
| LADY BUG (ARCADE) | |
|---|---|
| Year | 1981 |
| Developer | Universal |
| Publisher | Universal |
| Country | Japan |
| Genre | Maze |
| CPU(s) | Zilog Z80 4.000000 MHz |
| Video | 240 x 192 (V) 60.114504 Hz |
| Sound | Speaker 2 x SN76489 4.000000 MHz 1 Channel |
| Players | 1-2 |
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