Super Pacman - fun game

[RangerG]

I recently used my credit and added some $ and ordered several 5200 prototype repros. from AA. They are all good (Millipede is great, Jr. Pacman is great and Xevious is just OK). However, I am really surprised how fun Super Pacman is because I have read reviews about how this game is not fun to play, not in the true tradition of Pacman, etc. I think it is a love it or leave it game. To me it is addicitive and a nice change to the regular, Ms., and Junior. Anyone else like the game and more importantly does anyone have any strategies or hints to play it better. I looked on the web and couldn't find much. I know it is a pain to scan, but if anyone has an old videogame magazine that has a SuperPacman review or article -- please attach it (hint hint Mr. Retrogamer . Actually, that won't work because SuperPac was only released on ??. Comments . . .

 

Take care,

RG

[+Allan]

http://www.atarimagazines.com/cva/v1n2/pacman.php

 

Allan

[RangerG]

Allan --

 

Exactly what I wanted - thanks!

 

--RG

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

I love the 5200 Super Pac - I've had mine for a few years now. If anything, it's tougher than the arcade game simply by virtue of the power pills and super power pills wearing off a lot faster. Yikes!

[RangerG]

Phosphor dot --

 

Actually -- I checked out your site and Tempest's Atari Proto site and the good reviews convinced me to go ahead and get Super Pacman. Your site is fun to look through and it is well-designed. Everyone needs to check out the picture of you doing the weather on television (quite scary oufit ).

 

-RG

[NE146]

That's exactly why I have a hard time with 5200 Super Pac.. the power pills just don't last! I used to love the arcade game as a kid and played it to the point that I burned out on it.. So I'm pretty familiar with the default difficulty and the 5200 version seems to go above and beyond that! That being said, it's an awesome translation.. it just needs a slight difficulty "tweaking".

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

Everyone needs to check out the picture of you doing the weather on television (quite scary oufit   ).

 

Yeah, that was my attempt to convince them to not have me doing the weather on television... What can I say, that was low-budget, Weird-Al's-UHF-style local TV at its scariest!

[RangerG]

Is this the man and the shirt you would want to see while eating a bowl of cereal getting ready for a hard day's work:

 

http://www.thelogbook.com/work/

 

Earl - Great pic and nice work on the website and in your profession!

 

My wife and I live in the Tallahassee/South Georgia (Thomasville/Bainbridge) TV market which is pretty small and some of the local television broadcasts are sad to watch as backgrounds fall or graphics are messed up. It is amazing the difference in quality among television markets.

 

Take care and keep updating your websites (you have readers!)

[ZylonBane]

Super Pac-Man is a fantastic arcade conversion. The music is dead perfect. On the computer version (which I had on disk), I actually went to the trouble of hacking the keys to look like their arcade counterparts.

[oesii]

 

My wife and I live in the Tallahassee/South Georgia (Thomasville/Bainbridge) TV market which is pretty small and some of the local television broadcasts are sad to watch as backgrounds fall or graphics are messed up. It is amazing the difference in quality among television markets.  

 

 

Lol, I went to college in Tallahasse starting in 1988, I was shocked with the hokey local news and commericals having come in from Miami. It was all pretty entertaining though, the one commerical I remember was Tom's Jewlery, don't know if he's still around but it had all sorts of people waving gold nuggets and diamond rings saying Tom made it for them. The locals they got to do the spots were hilarious

 

Back on topic, there's a review of Super-Pac here:

http://www.videogamecritic.net/5200sz.htm#...m#Super_Pac-Man

 

But I think he was a little harsh, it should get big points for being a great arcade conversion. And if you're not so caught up in comparing it to the original, it's a fun, fast paced game.

[ZylonBane]

That guy is a blithering idiot. Only a "C+" for Star Raiders? 'Nuff said there.

 

Anyway, I found this usenet post from the guy who programmed the Super Pac port:

From: Landon Dyer (landon@netcom.com)

Subject: Re: Super Pac-Man from B&C  

View: Complete Thread (15 articles)  

Original Format  

Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit

Date: 1995/12/20  

 

 

Halliwell E Sra 436TS/TAC (halliwee@ts436.dyess.af.mil) wrote:

 

: On Sun, 17 Dec 1995 , landon@netcom.com (Landon Dyer) said:  

: >  I definitely recall fixing a few double-buffering and "non-opening

: > door" bugs fairly late in development. The testers had it by then, so

: > it's entirely likely that more than one version leaked.  

: Egad!  YOU wrote Super Pac-Man?  I've always considered that one of

: the BEST arcade-to-home conversions ever done on the 8-bits... making

: it all the more shame that it was never officially released.

 

 Thank you very, very much.

 

 I might as well induldge myself a bit here.  Pardon me while I set

the wayback machine... I've been meaning to do this for years, but

never really had the courage to write this up.

 

 In the fall of '82 I dropped out of college and joined a group in

the Atari Home Computer division responsible for doing conversions of

arcade games to cartridges.

 

 My first project was the Donkey Kong cartridge for the 400/800, one

of the 8-bit line's first 16K games.  I was basically the only

programmer working on it; Mona Lundstrum did the artwork, Brad Taylor

did the sounds, and Rich Harvey assisted with some of the attract-mode

and bitmap unpacking stuff.  DK took about five months to finish, and

was some of the hardest work I've ever done.

 

 At one point in development DK was 20K, far too big to fit.  I spent

a few weeks scrunching it; my roommate was always amused when I would

come home and triumphantly announce "I saved twenty bytes today!".

There were five bytes left in the ROM at the end.  There is one easter

egg: You *can* get my initials to come up, but it's really hard and it's

not really very exciting anyway.

 

 In the spring/summer of '83, Atari was starting to lose it.  After

DK, I spent the next six months doing nothing.  Atari management had

basically nothing but shit to give me to work on, my boss was a

complete loser, and layoffs were occuring every three or four months

(it seemed).  I helped my officemate Judy Bogart write the Robotron

cartridge (she did most of the work, I just gave her little pushes,

but she gave me 25% of her completion bonus anyway).

 

 Finally this Super Pac-Man project landed in our group.  It was

better than the other horrors they'd licensed (Kangaroo and Arabian,

if you remember them).  Super Pac was still a loser of a title, but I

decided "Fuck 'em, I'll do the best job I can."  Since the company was

falling apart, nobody was really tracking what was going on, so I got

a solid nine months to work on the game and managed to (I believe) put

in some polish.

 

 Super Pac was "finished" in late June of 1984.  A week or two later,

Jack Tramiel bought the bits of Atari that he wanted, and that was

pretty much that.  [i did a lot of stuff on the Atari ST, but I'll not

detail it here in the 8-bit group. :-) ]

 

: Things that especially impressed me about it were the character mode

: graphics for the ghosts (I somehow glitched it once, and was treated

: to the sight of clumps of ATASCII characters marching around the

: screen ), and the *music*.  The music was perfect, near as I

: could tell.  How did you do that?

 

 I didn't do the music.  It could have been done by Brad, but I

really don't recall.

 

 The character mode graphics were a lark.  I thought they'd work out

better than mode $E, and they did, and they let me add another color

to the screen.

 

 I never thought that Super Pac was hard enough after the first

sixteen screens or so.  It was just attrition after that.  (Doing the

"hardest" level of DK's 'elevators' rack was fun -- I stuck it on a

logic analyzer, slowed it down and made sure that it was *possible* to

get through, then emitted an evil chuckle and shipped it).

 

: Did you have access to the arcade source code?

 

 I wish!  We had access to the source for Atari arcade games, of

course, but I never heard of Nintendo releasing anything.  We

basically just played the games a *lot*, video-taped sessions, and

read the "cheats" books you could buy anywhere.

 

: What other 8-bit games have you written?

 

 A public-domain Centipede rip-off called Myriapede, early '82.  The

released version has a bug with the old 'B' revision ROMs, so I'm not

sure if how widely it spread.  The guy who wrote Atari's own cartridge

version of Centipede [Dave Getreu] said that Myriapede was better than

his own effort, and then hired me....

 

 They just don't design computers like those 8-bitters anymore.  I'd

like to write PC games, but the VGA is just too putrid for words.

 

 

--  

 

landon@netcom.com                   wwwwwWWWWWHHHOOO00000OOOSSSSSHH!!!!!

 R1100GS, R100GS, TransAlp            (sound of low-flying pig)

   DoD #1475

             "Everybody thinking, thinking pretty hard...."   -- Thomas Dolby

[Bryan]

That's cool. I had a short email exchange with Landon back in the late ST days, and I wish I could find the messages. He talked a little about all the weird stuff going on at Atari back in the day.

 

-Bry

[NE146]

I wonder if anyone ended up working on Arabian in any capacity at all