SS Posted July 30, 2004 Share Posted July 30, 2004 So there's nowhere to d/l the Ebivision version of Pac-Man?? It doesn't live up to the hype. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Godzilla Posted July 30, 2004 Share Posted July 30, 2004 Uhm, not! I think it's pretty damn arse rippin'. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted July 30, 2004 Share Posted July 30, 2004 does it have all the intermissions and all the items?? Yes...though they are not as polished as I'd like them to be (and the monster eyes are still only 1 unanimated frame). The intro screen and intermissions were my first attempts at writing display kernals...which is why they are so crummy Still trying to work out the last remaining bugs before working on those. I would have liked to have been able to multiplex both player objects (so that the monsters and/or fruit can have more than 1 color)...but I don't know anything about how to accomplish that. The missiles and ball object (as well as hardware collisions) are not used at all. Only a hack tho, so I'm kind of limited to what would be possible anyway. As some people suggested, what this game really needs is a total rewrite from the ground up. Any takers? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NE146 Posted July 30, 2004 Share Posted July 30, 2004 Gawdamn Zilla.. where you been? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted July 30, 2004 Share Posted July 30, 2004 Hey! You can't prove that Mr. Goth You better don't challenge him! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Godzilla Posted July 30, 2004 Share Posted July 30, 2004 Gawdamn Zilla.. where you been? when you are 30 stories tall, you sometimes miss things going on down below. :-P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TuzenTCA Posted July 31, 2004 Share Posted July 31, 2004 Pesco is pretty good (I have it), but I'd love to see the Pac Man. Maybe part of it is knowing that they don't want it released. Couldn't they call it Puc-Man or something similar? Oh well Pac-Man was orginally called Puc-Man or Puck-man but the creators thought that the "P" might get changed to an "F" in a slander and then there goes their great game. I read that in "The First Quarter" A twenty five year history of videogames. Just my two cents. James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted July 31, 2004 Share Posted July 31, 2004 That's Puck-Man (the original Jap title). Namco doesn't hold the license for a game called "Puc-Man" AFAIK. Nor "Buck-Man", "Luck-Man", etc. etc. (or even the dreaded "Fuck-Man" for that matter). But that point is not the issue, since Eric was worried about the very concept being challenged by Namco. AFAIK, that fear hasn't changed...so it's doubtful that EbiPac will ever be released on cart. Tho IMO, that fear is ungrounded. I mean, Pac-Man Arcade is being sold without any hassles...right? Namco doesn't seem to be worried about a little 2600 game...and they've undoubtedly heard about it by now (a simple Google search pulls it right up, as well as a myrad of clones that also use the proper spelling). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TuzenTCA Posted July 31, 2004 Share Posted July 31, 2004 I don't care what the hell Namco thinks. I just threw that in there 'cause I felt like it. I thought it was Puck-Man, because Fuc-Man was not all that thrilling. I am thankful for your insight , yet I did not know we could use the word Fuck. I thought I heard Albert tell us to tune it down due to younger users. Whatever -James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted July 31, 2004 Share Posted July 31, 2004 As long as words are used in the proper context The possibility of the game Puck-Man being changed into Fuck-Man by vandals is part of videogame history. These words are no longer acceptable in the forums... B*m B*tty T*ts P*x Kn*ckers Kn*ckers W**-W** Semprini Semprini? * forum gestapo appears and arrests Nukey Shay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Godzilla Posted July 31, 2004 Share Posted July 31, 2004 yea, i really dont understand that fear. shit ATARI sued magnavox, not namco. and there have been SO many rip offs over the years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moycon Posted July 31, 2004 Share Posted July 31, 2004 Can we say Octopussy? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moycon Posted July 31, 2004 Share Posted July 31, 2004 Guess so. So tell me if such a decent version of Pac-Man is/was possible, why'd we get stuck with such a crappy version back in the day? Seems to me Atari would have made alot more money back then if they had released a decent version of Pac-Man. Everyoine at that time was Pac crazy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raindog Posted July 31, 2004 Share Posted July 31, 2004 This ought to be a FAQ. Atari (or Warner, or whoever) saw Pac-Man as an opportunity for a huge cash cow, and didn't want to spend the extra money on an 8K game. They also wanted to get the game out as quickly as possible so that Tod Frye only had 6 weeks to code it. Tod wasn't really a Pac-Man aficionado himself, but it's not like anyone in the company took him aside and said, "You know, Pac-Man has no eyes, the ghosts are supposed to be noticeably different colors and the maze should be black and blue" either. And it's not like they *didn't* get rich off of Pac-Man, though it may well have contributed to the eventual demise of Atari in some small way through erosion of goodwill/reputation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted July 31, 2004 Share Posted July 31, 2004 About the last point, I think that the game originally DID have the correct color scheme (the code proves that they DO have different colors). But for whatever reason, the background was changed to blue...so that meant that the monster colors also needed to be lighter. If given more time, the code probably could have been tightened up (providing space for additional improvements). If you look at a disassembly, there are actually only 3 unused bytes in the whole thing. No 8k, so he couldn't use a more advanced flicker routine that depended on that amount of space. The Atari beancounters didn't view it as a problem (IIRC, Atari Pac-Man is still viewed as a success in terms of profit). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moycon Posted July 31, 2004 Share Posted July 31, 2004 Agreed, Im sure it made a profit just based on the name. But I imagine alot of people who would've went out and bought the whole system just to be able to play Pac-Man at home would have ...if the home version wasn't such a bad translation. And yes Even without a FAQ, Im well aware of the whole 8k too expensive for Atari deal. But here's the thing, IIRC, there was a 4k version of Pac-Man floating around that blew the ass off Atari's version. Or am I mistaken? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ubersaurus Posted July 31, 2004 Share Posted July 31, 2004 Agreed, Im sure it made a profit just based on the name. But I imagine alot of people who would've went out and bought the whole system just to be able to play Pac-Man at home would have ...if the home version wasn't such a bad translation. And yes Even without a FAQ, Im well aware of the whole 8k too expensive for Atari deal. But here's the thing, IIRC, there was a 4k version of Pac-Man floating around that blew the ass off Atari's version. Or am I mistaken? 4k pac-man = ebivision version Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted July 31, 2004 Share Posted July 31, 2004 ...or the 4k version of Hack'em! [/plug] BTW I just converted Atari's original Pac-Man (with the updated colors) to 8k. Gonna pick around at it for awhile. Demo: pacman8k.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NE146 Posted July 31, 2004 Share Posted July 31, 2004 This outta be interesting Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moycon Posted July 31, 2004 Share Posted July 31, 2004 Hack'em! ... Yep this is the 4k game I was taking about. Wasn't sure if I could mention it. Now tell me Atari wouldn't have doubled their profits off the Pac-Man licence if this had been released back in the day. Truely stunning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NovaXpress Posted July 31, 2004 Share Posted July 31, 2004 The amount of money they made of the Pac-Man game wasn't the problem. It was the best selling cart in 2600 history based on the name alone. Yet the kids who owned the game were pretty much unanimously disappointed and started looking to other machines. I've heard it suggested that Atari crippled the 2600 PacMan so that the 5200 would look even better when it was released that fall. I doubt that Atari's marketing department could have come up with something that intricate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Andrew Davie Posted July 31, 2004 Share Posted July 31, 2004 This ought to be a FAQ. Atari (or Warner, or whoever) saw Pac-Man as an opportunity for a huge cash cow, and didn't want to spend the extra money on an 8K game. They also wanted to get the game out as quickly as possible so that Tod Frye only had 6 weeks to code it. One wonders what any of the XYPE guys might do with 6 weeks of time, with a Pacman clone as the goal. Manuel's looking for a new project now, so I read. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted July 31, 2004 Share Posted July 31, 2004 A plus/minus kind of thing. On one hand, there's a plethora of examples to draw ideas from...and it's more comfortable working in a "non-corporate" atmosphere. But on the other hand, most people have day jobs...and it might be difficult to devote 8 hours each day to a project. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raindog Posted August 1, 2004 Share Posted August 1, 2004 I don't know how much of an itch there is anymore, either, with one mediocre but good looking 4K game out there (but not legally), someone else's incredible hack of that game into a nigh unto perfect Pac-Man, and then my increasingly old and busted hack of Ms. Pac-Man. Yeah, so no one person has pulled off an incredible homebrew Pac-Man singlehandedly, but there are decent Pac-Mans out there now. I'd been thinking for a long time about trying to do another one from scratch, but what's out there now is kinda good enough for me. Besides, there are other games that have yet to be served nearly as well by the 2600 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted August 1, 2004 Share Posted August 1, 2004 and then my increasingly old and busted hack of Ms. Pac-Man. Aaaa...you were still first (in lieu of Ebivision's unreleased port)...And Ms Pac still has better AI than the other 2600 ports. Tho every home port is going to be overshadowed by Opcode's seemingly flawless CV project. Besides, my hack is still busted Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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