Pac-Man gets 50 points for eating a power pellet. These large, flashing pellets sit near the maze's four corners and temporarily turn the ghosts blue, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for escalating bonus points.
Power pellets are worth more than ordinary Pac-Dots, which give 10 points each, but their main value is strategic rather than numerical. A player can use one to reverse the ghosts' direction, create an escape route, and potentially eat all four ghosts before the frightened period ends. The ghost values rise from 200 to 400, 800, and 1,600 points.
A common mix-up is confusing the pellet's 50-point value with the ghost-eating scores it enables. The pellet itself is always worth 50 points in the original arcade game. Its effect also becomes shorter on later levels and eventually disappears, making timing increasingly important.