I like Pac-Man *bong* *bong*...

[VectorGamer]

Why do I keep hearing rumors that the game was programmed in a short time period? In Stella AT 20 Tod Frye says he worked on it for 6 months not 6 weeks. Besides that, the article says that it took 5 months for Atari to develop it, then says Tod Frye programmed it in 6 weeks. So which is it Wikipedia, 5 months or 6 weeks?

 

Quite a few books I have read say 6 weeks. And it's believable when you look at the product.

I would like to know where those books are getting their information from. I have the video of Tod Frye saying that he worked on it for 6 months.

 

 

 

He should have stuck with saying six weeks - at least he could use that as an excuse as to why it sucked so bad.

[accousticguitar]

BTW I agree that 240 games per year is excessively high(er than they were). There were only 2 games "in the hat" before work began - Pac-Man and Missile Command. The two programmers...Frye and Fulop. Rob chose the latter, because as I understand it he considered Pac-Man to be unworkable.

The way Tod Frye tells it it was Bob Polaro and he chose Defender because he thought Pac-Man was unworkable. Again, I'm going by what he says in the video.

Edited August 6, 2009 by accousticguitar

[Nukey Shay]

Oops...it's not the first time that I made that mistake! Rob - Bob. Both of the games feature heavy flicker, so it sould be easy to remember. Incidentally, Defender was even worse...dropping images twice as much as Pac-Man does. And just like Pac-Man - native collision-detection, overuse of subroutines and a great deal of superfluous code...hardly any room left for shape definitions.

[Nukey Shay]

He should have stuck with saying six weeks - at least he could use that as an excuse as to why it sucked so bad.

There's nothing that was going on that all of the programmers didn't have to deal with. It's difficult to imagine this day when we have unlimited access to computers thousands of times more powerful than mainframes from 1980...that can turn a text file into code as fast as pushing the button. The text files that we work with alone could be too large for their computer to handle

 

Pac-Man and ET being mediocre games has one positive aspect...they could have been much better programs that Atari was forced to dump in the landfill As Coleco found out, even Mario couldn't prevent the market crash...so if they would have been more advanced at the time, it wouldn't have mattered in the least.

[Nukey Shay]

...except two other games being pointed at by modern-day revisionists as the cause of all the hubbub, I mean.

 

 

Hmm...I wonder which ones they would have chose? Any guesses? Could make for an interesting side-topic.

[VectorGamer]

Different time as well - classic games were HOT at the time Pac-Man was released and the timing was such that it HAD to go out the door whether it was good or not. It's unfortunate that it played out that way.

 

 

He should have stuck with saying six weeks - at least he could use that as an excuse as to why it sucked so bad.

There's nothing that was going on that all of the programmers didn't have to deal with. It's difficult to imagine this day when we have unlimited access to computers thousands of times more powerful than mainframes from 1980...that can turn a text file into code as fast as pushing the button. The text files that we work with alone could be too large for their computer to handle

 

Pac-Man and ET being mediocre games has one positive aspect...they could have been much better programs that Atari was forced to dump in the landfill As Coleco found out, even Mario couldn't prevent the market crash...so if they would have been more advanced at the time, it wouldn't have mattered in the least.

[jrok]

BTW I agree that 240 games per year is excessively high(er than they were). There were only 2 games "in the hat" before work began - Pac-Man and Missile Command. The two programmers...Frye and Fulop. Rob chose the latter, because as I understand it he considered Pac-Man to be unworkable.

 

Do you mean unworkable in the time frame or unworkable in 4K?

[accousticguitar]

I think they meant unworkable on the VCS.

[accousticguitar]

Oops...it's not the first time that I made that mistake! Rob - Bob. Both of the games feature heavy flicker, so it sould be easy to remember. Incidentally, Defender was even worse...dropping images twice as much as Pac-Man does. And just like Pac-Man - native collision-detection, overuse of subroutines and a great deal of superfluous code...hardly any room left for shape definitions.

Missile Command, Defender, and Pac-Man all have 1981 copyright dates on them, so I suppose they were all being worked on at roughly the same time.

 

Oddly enough, the flicker in Pac-Man doesn't bother me. The biggest problem I have is sometimes I will die because I try to turn a certain way and there is no response on the screen so I run into a ghost. The other things that bother me are the maze exits on the side instead of the top and bottom, Pac-Man doesn't turn his head when going up or down, the sound of pellets being eaten, and the lousy maze. Those last 4 things are little things but they all add up. I'm not a big Defender fan either. Fortunately I didn't buy that one when it was new.

[Nukey Shay]

...the timing was such that it HAD to go out the door whether it was good or not.

I don't believe that it was viewed that way by management. Some aspects suggest that they had a role in influencing how it turned out...such as having a background color at all. It was a time where home ports did not necessarily need to be faithful to the games they were based off in order to be popular. I mean, KC Munchkin was a current buzzword...and that was very unlike Pac-Man as well. Moving dots, a much smaller maze, etc. The killer app that preceded Pac-Man shows this pretty well...Space Invaders is missing half of the invasion force and all of the "official" images and sounds. What they may not have expected tho was that the public had already begun getting exactly that in unofficial home computer ports of titles...which had the resources to make home versions more arcade-like than ever before. And after a year of waiting, most of the fans probably expected something a lot closer...especially when it carried the "official" name.

[Godzilla]

ive always liked the original pac (not loved, mind,) but on a normal ol living room crt tv of the day, the ghosts actually looked cool, they looked like ghosts. even todays uber consoles don't have shimmery flickery ghosts that look ethereal.

[jrok]

ive always liked the original pac (not loved, mind,) but on a normal ol living room crt tv of the day, the ghosts actually looked cool, they looked like ghosts. even todays uber consoles don't have shimmery flickery ghosts that look ethereal.

 

I'm pretty sure they weren't supposed to actually be "ghosts", though. They were always described as "monsters" from what I remember of the arcade cabinets. Although, I supposed that after you ate them, you could probably describe their floating eyeballs as ghosts.

[Nukey Shay]

IIRC, a Midway arcade flyer was the first to refer to them as "ghosts" (most likely because of the bedsheet-like appearance)...even tho the 3rd intermission shows that they aren't just disembodied eyes wearing sheets. Atari is off the hook for that.

Edited August 6, 2009 by Nukey Shay

[jrok]

IIRC, a Midway arcade flyer was the first to refer to them as "ghosts" (most likely because of the bedsheet-like appearance)...even tho the 3rd intermission shows that they aren't just disembodied eyes wearing sheets. Atari is off the hook for that.

 

I think the second intermission shows that too, with the red monster being partially "exposed", right?

 

Hmm... I just found a flyer that refers to them both as "Monsters" and "Ghost Monsters" (is that a dead monster's spirit, or a regular spirit that has become monstrous?). Furthermore, I think the game itself referred to them as "Characters"

[Godzilla]

the way they look like the classic 'sheet ghosts' with eye-holes will forever slot them in as ghosts for me, no matter what some paperwork says, all the kids in my 'hood in NYC called em ghosts. so I still like the glowy nature of the 2600 ghosts.

[Vic George 2K3]

When I first saw Pac-Man in the arcades, I thought the ghosts were the McDonald's Fry Guys.

[Lord Helmet]

Oops...it's not the first time that I made that mistake! Rob - Bob. Both of the games feature heavy flicker, so it sould be easy to remember. Incidentally, Defender was even worse...dropping images twice as much as Pac-Man does. And just like Pac-Man - native collision-detection, overuse of subroutines and a great deal of superfluous code...hardly any room left for shape definitions.

Missile Command, Defender, and Pac-Man all have 1981 copyright dates on them, so I suppose they were all being worked on at roughly the same time.

 

 

Really? Huh, I always felt like Missile Command was much older than those other two games. Memory must be getting shoddy

[accousticguitar]

Really? Huh, I always felt like Missile Command was much older than those other two games. Memory must be getting shoddy

That's what it says on the label. I didn't look on the net or anything.

[NE146]

Oops...it's not the first time that I made that mistake! Rob - Bob. Both of the games feature heavy flicker, so it sould be easy to remember. Incidentally, Defender was even worse...dropping images twice as much as Pac-Man does. And just like Pac-Man - native collision-detection, overuse of subroutines and a great deal of superfluous code...hardly any room left for shape definitions.

Missile Command, Defender, and Pac-Man all have 1981 copyright dates on them, so I suppose they were all being worked on at roughly the same time.

 

 

Really? Huh, I always felt like Missile Command was much older than those other two games. Memory must be getting shoddy

 

I remember Missile Command being much earlier. But then again we were all like 11 at the time, so a timeframe difference of 10 months probably felt like ages

[Dauber]

I definitely remember playing Space Invaders, Asteroids, and Missile Command LONG before I ever heard a rumor that Pac-Man was coming to the 2600.

[Lord Helmet]

It always felt to me like Pac-Man, Defender, and Berzerk were the last of the arcade games Atari did right before switching to silver labels. Missile Command seems like it was available around the same time as Asteroids, during the height of the picture label era.

[ToughGirl]

Video game crash or not, I hated that game... It was just horrible after that long wait, we even pre-booked one. I remember flipping it on, and being completely disappointed, bordering devastated, for the first time in my life! That game took my innocence I tell you!! I remember thinking 'Did the programmer ever actually SEE Pacman?" I hate the look of it, I hate the sound of it, I hate the picture on the cartridge itself!! Thank god Rob Kudla rocked the hell out that hack! That's what we all wanted back in the 80's!! And thanks to all you guys tweaking those old games! I wish I could program! There are a few games I would love to change a little.

[ClassicTom]

I guess it would take about two bong hits to like the Atari 2600 Pac-Man version.

 

That's what I was thinking

 

Save2600 Me too and who is that hot chick in your avatar?

[BigCatRik]

Not being a fan of arcade Pac-Man I enjoyed my Atari Pac-Man cartridge probably as much as other cartridges on my B-list.

 

However, being a major fan of Gorf at the arcade I was supremely and profoundly disappointed by the CBS Gorf cartridge. I tried to return it but they wouldn't take it back. That was definitely the low point of my 2600 days.

 

Rik

[Fischer500]

Just a taste of what could have been.

 

It runs on anything that can do F8 banking (Atari's "standard" way). I left the maze layout unchanged because nobody knows what Frye might have dished up with a double ROM. Some of this...unique center icon, reduced (apparent) flicker, seperate dot color, more forgiving collisions...was done just by optimizing the program. The other 4k was squandered on expanded animation frames and 2 other kernels.

 

WOW. Thats all i can think of. WOW.

 

Can you possibly burn that to a carteridge, make a label, and put it in the homebrew store thing? I'd buy it. =D