Despite Namco releasing several of their own arcade games for the Nintendo Entertainment System, the first NES port of Ms. Pac-Man was actually published by Tengen. Using the same ideas as the 16-bit ports released for the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis, Tengen's NES port strives for arcade-accurate proportions of the characters and the playfields, and then piles on the extras in the form of all-new mazes and optional power-ups. Where the 16-bit ports also offered enhanced graphics, the NES port instead features pixel-perfect recreations of the arcade game's graphics, at least as perfect as the NES can make them. Vertical scrolling is necessary to preserve those recreations, and some players may find that distracting, but otherwise this is about as good as an NES Ms. Pac-Man can get. That's why, when Namco finally did publish their own port a few years later, it seemed needlessly redundant. By itself, Namco's version isn't bad, and it succeeds at least as well as their other NES ports, but the redesigned graphics, lack of extras, and seemingly harder difficulty serve mostly to remind players there is a better Ms. Pac-Man to be had. Players who don't like Tengen's scrolling game will appreciate Namco's screen-sized mazes, but just about everyone else will opt for the Tengen game.
Grade for Namco's port: B
Grade for Tengen's port: A-