CD-Man Version 2.0

The Good
When I first played this game - in its first unfinished version which only had three worlds and the last one was visibly not ready - I liked it at once because of the graphics. A Pacman clone is not a sophisticated game anyway, but in CD-Man the sceneries are a real pleasure to look at. They are drawn in just three colours, but with lots of tiny details. The first world looks like a countryside with some medieval ruins, the second - a tropical sea, the third - the outer space, the fourth features famous buildings and structures from all over the world (Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, the Sydney Opera etc) and the fifth is a very atmospheric haunted lake. These five worlds also have power-ups which look different in each world (well, almost - the fifth world has the same kind of power-up as the first) and very interesting bonus items - in consecutive worlds these are: fruits, sea shells, Zodiac signs, country flags and pieces of musical notation. Each world has several levels (more in "The Bad") and the bonuses are different in each level - for example in level 1-1 these are apples, grapes, cherries and bananas and in level 1-2 - oranges, coconuts, pears and watermelons. Of course enemies look different in each world as well. Usually they only change colour when the power-up is picked, but in the fourth world it's a clever idea - police cars change to firetrucks.
The menu system doesn't have any such decorations, but is very clear. An interesting feature are gameplay modes - apart from ordinary one player and two player modes it has double mode, with two CD-Men walking around the area at once. However, I haven't been able to try it due to living by myself and not having friends who are interested in vintage games too. Actually I don't even know what are the keys for the second CD-Man...
The game is slightly more complicated than the original Pacman - there are shortcuts only CD-Man can use (the enemies won't pass through) and world one has a locked section which, once you get the key, can be a safe haven from the baddies.

The Bad
The CD-Man looks a bit silly. The first version of the game had an ordinary yellow Pacman in his place which didn't look good - but the CD-Man is equally uninteresting. However, a nice thing is that he changes appearance a bit - for example in the fifth world he turns black to suit the dark mood of this level.
The level system is not very logical. At first you complete two levels of each world (in the first version it were three levels), than after the fifth world you return to a single level of the first one and so on. However, the worst thing is that it looks like the game can't be finished. If you get to the fifth world for the second time (that is, to its third level), the dots don't disappear and collected power-ups periodically reappear. Which means one can't complete this level, one can only wander around until one loses all lives.
On modern computers players should be wary of some technical requirements. Not all old games run too fast on faster computers, sometimes it's even the other way around - but CD-Man belongs to the first group. If you don't slow down the game (which is anyway very easy in DOSBox frontends such as D-Fend Reloaded), you need to slow the game down directly from its menu and suffer the humiliating comment "Wake me up when you're finished". ;) On my computer minimum speed is not slow at all, it's ordinary, OK for playing - comparable to medium speed on the first computer I had used for playing this game. When I tried maximum speed on this computer, the game was over in a few seconds...

The Bottom Line
Basically it's a Pacman with nice graphics. The original Pacman was graphically a very simple, even primitive game (even though there were later Pacman variants with more complicated design and interesting graphics). Basically, CD-Man is Pacman - it is played in the same way, but what sets the game apart from its inspiration are the graphics. The game doesn't get boring quickly because one can admire the graphics and keep noticing details.