Did Pac-Man Get a Fair Shake?

[Kid Ice]

I would say YES. I think like many kids I really wanted to like it. The night I got it I played it for hours. My friend Kevin came over on the weekend and we played it a little while, and he was like "This is really bad." And I said "you know, it is bad!" It just hadn't occurred to me until Kevin said it that it *could* be bad. It was Pac Man!

 

After that it got set aside in favor of other games, and when I would go to my friend's houses I discovered that no one wanted to play Pac Man.

 

I remember being at my friend's birthday party and his parents gave him Star Wars: Jedi Arena, and we put it on and we all thought it sucked. So he asked if we wanted to play Pac Man instead and the unanimous decision was to continue to suffer through Jedi Arena.

 

Everyone I knew bought that game, it was almost like this weird status symbol to own it. I'd say it got a pretty fair shake.

[+LS650]

Pacman sucks. Lousy sound effects, crappy-looking "mouth opening" of Pacman, maze isn't even vaguely close to the arcade, hell - they didn't even get the colors for the maze right.

 

It sucks the big green donkey dong. It is shit in a cartridge.

[opeygon]

did it get a fair shot? in short, yes. i liked it as a kid too. but as an adult, i can see it's obvious short comings, and how it was a disapointment when compared to expectations at the time. it's still worth playing from time to time (in my mind at least) and it has a place in the history of video games. be it good or bad, it will always be with us.

[supercat]

I had K.C. Munchkin.

[Nukey Shay]

...and I had Taxman. But this is the VCS we're talking about here A good version of the yellow chomper would have to wait for his liberated counterpart.

[+remowilliams]

Did Pac-Man Get a Fair Shake?

I think it's safe to say that 2600 Pac-Man cannot in fact, be shaken enough.

[goodwill_gamer]

weirdmyspacebarisn'tworkinginthisbox

 

that is weird, i had to type this out in wordpad, then copy and paste. anyway, i liked pac-man 2600 just fine, up until a few years ago, when i heard so many people here putting it down. i never really thought about all of the flaws. i always thought that the blinking ghosts looked cool, i thought that it actually meant something. i loved the sounds of the game, and i liked the way it looked. but after noticing all of the bad things other people pointed out, it kind of ruined it for me.

[oldgames]

I guess I had a rare opportunity to judge 2600 Pac-Man on its own merits.

 

I'm probably the only one in the world who had never played the arcade game before playing it on the 2600.

 

I wore that poor old cartridge out!! I loved it and still plug it in from time to time to relive the good old days.

[+Random Terrain]

Consider what DEBRO's Pacman 4K looks like, yes, it was given a fair shake.

 

Screenshots and Final Rom

I think Breakpack's hack of that is better:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...t&p=1355523

 

The ghost's eyes look better. They don't look worried or like somebody punched them in the eyes. Since you can't recreate the original look with the whites of the eyes, it's best to keep it simple.

 

 

Oh yeah, I hated the original Atari 2600 Pac-Man. We still played it since I didn't have that many cartridges at the time, but that didn't change the fact that it sucked. I like Lock 'N' Chase a lot more than Atari 2600 Pac-Man. No flicker and you can trap the cops.

Edited April 17, 2008 by Random Terrain

[Nukey Shay]

Not to derail the thread...but here's an example of what I mentioned earlier:

 

There are no significant code changes here (very little, in fact). I simply shifted a few instructions to gain the cycles needed to restore the maze color, and edited the color and dot data tables. Toggle B&W for PAL. Optimizing further would provide the space needed for 4-direction sprites, but that would be reinventing the same wheel again (just examine the changes done to the 8k version if this is desired).

Colorfix.zip

[Sincity]

It was about the same time (I'm your age) that my friend got Pac-Man. Yes, we were disappointed. Look what they were able to do with Ms. Pac-Man

[Feyer]

Pac-Man was certainly a status symbol when it came out. My friends and I knew a kid that bragged about getting the cart all day at school and invited us over to play it and rub our noses in it to satisfy his own pride.

 

After school, we all sat around his family room console TV wanting to finally see just how great this game was but when the bragger turned it on, we all laughed! His fleeting moment of fame ended right there amongst the "bonk-bonk-bonk" sounds and flickering pale ghosts.

 

When the much improved Ms. Pac-Man came out, I invited him over to play it and just smiled quietly.

[legeek]

I guess I am old enough to have played VCS Pac-man when it came out, but young enough to have not been bothered by the now bad port. I still really like it for what it is. I never liked VCS Defender though...

 

Cheers,

Ben

[graywest]

Here's a picture of me playing Pac-Man on Christmas Morning, 1983, moments after receiving my first Atari 2600. (Note the Pac-Man manual lying on the floor in front of me.)

 

 

If you look closely at my face, I'm obviously not too thrilled with the conversion job. I was probably thinking, wow, if only Atari management had allowed an 8k bankswitched cart, Tod Frye could have included the intermissions. Possibly the game was also making me a bit constipated.

 

Or maybe I was just concentrating really hard.

 

Also note - footie pyjamas rock.

[retrogeek]

Even as a kid I didn't like the VCS version of Pac-Man. Since I loved the coin-op I could immediately tell the VCS version was inferior; heck, even Donkey Kong (another of my favs) was unbearable on the VCS.

[Impaler_26]

Pacman sucks. Lousy sound effects, crappy-looking "mouth opening" of Pacman, maze isn't even vaguely close to the arcade, hell - they didn't even get the colors for the maze right.

 

It sucks the big green donkey dong. It is shit in a cartridge.

:rolling:

[Tempest]

I grew up with the Atari 8-bit version which while not perfect, was much closer to the arcade version. It wasn't until years later (1987ish) that I ended up with the 2600 version. IIRC my first reaction was "Eh, it's alright I guess", but I never played it much other than when I was looking for something odd to play with for a few moments.

 

Tempest

[Skylark68]

I enjoyed Pac Man on the VCS a lot. It was one of my favorite games for a long time, at least until I had Yars Revenge. I actually didn't even relate the Atari version with the arcade and thought of it as it's own game. I still remember the sound effects to this day. I do know that i wanted Warlords more than Pac-Man when my Dad bought it for us, but my Mom overruled me.

Edited April 17, 2008 by Skylark68

[iratanam]

Even as a kid I didn't like the VCS version of Pac-Man. Since I loved the coin-op I could immediately tell the VCS version was inferior; heck, even Donkey Kong (another of my favs) was unbearable on the VCS.

 

 

DK on 2600 rocked. I played it way more than Pac-Man, went through either 2 or 3 carts at the time.

[retrogeek]

Even as a kid I didn't like the VCS version of Pac-Man. Since I loved the coin-op I could immediately tell the VCS version was inferior; heck, even Donkey Kong (another of my favs) was unbearable on the VCS.

 

 

DK on 2600 rocked. I played it way more than Pac-Man, went through either 2 or 3 carts at the time.

 

 

I love Donkey Kong! The thing that used to drive me nuts as a kid was the way Donkey Kong looked in the VCS version. Great game overall (it was very playable on the VCS) but for some reason I couldn't find it in myself to love it.

 

Edit: My father would beg me to turn down the sound because it drove him crazy.

Edited April 17, 2008 by retrogeek

[+LS650]

Yeah, I agree that Donkey Kong is decent. Except for the blocky looking Kong, everything else looks decent. Mario and the Princess are both multi-coloured, Mario actually looks like Mario, the fireballs are recognizable. The gameplay is not bad compared to the arcade - I think the only thing you can really knock is that it consists of only two screens. If they'd included a third screen DK would have rocked.

 

People knock 2600 DK but I think it's not bad - it's certainly not the travesty that Pacman is!

[+Random Terrain]

People knock 2600 DK but I think it's not bad - it's certainly not the travesty that Pacman is!

Now that I've played more Atari 2600 games, Donkey Kong doesn't suck as much as I used to think. I still wonder if it could have had more screens or at least could have had a prettier Imagic or Activision type of look.

[supercat]

The gameplay is not bad compared to the arcade - I think the only thing you can really knock is that it consists of only two screens. If they'd included a third screen DK would have rocked.

 

I don't mind the looks of DK, but find the gameplay lacking myself. It really needs to support flicker to allow barrels to double-team the player and fireballs to move vertically.

[godzillajoe]

I never got the "DK sucks because the ape looks terrible" argument

 

That affects gameplay HOW exactly?

[phuzzed]

I never liked Donkey Kong (1) It was missing the elevator level and (2) Mario was so damn fat, he couldn't jump a barrel unless you had a running start. Jumping barrels standing still took some careful planning...