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So the pinball computer is a bog-standard Bally pinball computer (or MPU as they're called in pinballland) from the early 80's. There's one diode of difference between Baby Pacman's MPU and other regular Bally pinball MPU's. So how the hecc do it work

Well remember the orange numerical score displays on 80's pinball? Yeah it talks to the videogame board through the wires that would've gone to those displays

And the videogame computer talks back to the pinball computer through its playfield switch inputs

and your score lives on the pinball MPU

So when you're playing pacman, the computer that keeps track of your score has NO IDEA WHAT'S GOING ON, it just gets told by the videogame computer "Increase the score" and it doesn't know why

this is the board that the high scores are saved in also

but your score is shown on the video screen

which is plugged into the videogame board

so...

...what's going on, does the videogame computer keep its own copy of the score which it spits out on the screen? No it can't be that, because then WHAT HAPPEN IF THE COMPUTERS DISAGREE, so I guess the videogame computer goes "Increase the score by 100 points, I am simulating pressing this playfield switch that scores 100 points," and then sixty times a second asks "Remind me what's the score again so I can show it to the player," is that really what happens? How bad do I wanna find out?