A terrific rethinking of Pac Man
Your "Pac Man" in this case isn't round but is instead shaped like a yield sign and his cartoon visage was a furry blue character with antennae on his head instead of being a smooth, shiny yellow orb. On screen, K.C.'s overall shape remained but the character himself was now white. The in-game graphics were spartan but largely above-board with the system's abilities or at least the other offerings for it. Their simplicity worked to good effect here, including the sound effects which had a constant fast-paced beat in the background while K.C. himself made the most noise, while he was in motion - a loud drumming sound in place of a "waka-waka". Oddly, when you release the controller, K.C. will stop in his tracks whereas Pac would have to hit a wall before stopping.
An intersting aspect of this game is that you only get once chance - there are no 3 or 5 lives to be had. You have a single opportunity to get a decent score and once you die, the game immediately starts over without skipping a beat. It's almost as if the gameplay never ends.
There are fewer ghosts running around the maze and their AI isn't as cranked up as it is in Pac Man iterations. For the most part, you'll accidentally run into them before you'll be chased down by them. In later levels, their speed ramps up a great deal and possibly their AI does as well; it's hard to tell as the action becomes much more fast paced and possibly you're just running into each other much more quickly.
The ghost's recharge box is a small cube in the center of the screen and the opening for it rotates clockwise, making it difficult for the ghosts to quickly regenerate. Another neat treat - if all of the ghosts are recharging and you grab a nearby power-up pellet, you can actually run into their box where they still sit and munch them all at once.
Interestingly, and probably to keep from getting sued, Magnavox's offering has dots that float around the screen, adding to your efforts. There are very few dots on the screen when a game starts, but they roam around and you have to chase them down before you can progress to the next level. Points are very small and are scarce in this game.
Although Magnavox was careful enough to distance their product as much as possible from Pac Man to hopefully avoid any litigation [the home versions were owned by Atari at that time], they were still sued by Atari anyway and Magnavox won, intially, allowing this cartridge to continue as Magnavox's best-selling title for this console.
The good times were short-lived, however, as Atari appealed the ruling and it was eventually overturned. Magnavox had to stop selling K.C. Munchkin and perhaps the gaming world was forever changed. Who knows - if they were able to continue selling this cartridge, perhaps more & better 3rd party developers would have jumped on board for the Odyssey2 and it might have given the 2600 a good run for its money, changing forever games as we now play them.
Magnavox tried to counter this, with limited success unfortunately, by issuing a replacement game called K.C.'s Krazy Chase. This game combined elements of Pac Man [K.C. and a maze] with another arcade game called Snake. You had to guide your K.C. through the maze and eat the segments of the bad guy from behind without letting his head touch you. A fun game and as challenging as K.C. Munchkin but, sadly and in this reviewer's opinion, the magic was lost and the Odyssey2 never recaptured is fleeting glimpse at success.
If you have an Odyssey2 and don't have K.C. Munchkin, you would do good to seek out a copy of this great, historically significant cartridge.