Excluding Pac-Man and ET, which is the worst game?

[davyK]

I defend it, but can understand why people who were really into the arcade game were disappointed by Pacman. Even the colour scheme alone was a bizarre choice but Atari management's rule was only space games have a black background. That alone would made such a difference re the look of the game and the visibility of those multiplexed , flickery ghosts.   The flicker against that background really compromised the enjoyment. Even on a CRT with phosphor effects the ghosts were hard to see at times.  But for those who weren't really into the arcade game and didn't play it that much, the game was playable as it had most of the elements albeit presented minimally.

 

The arcade port that disappointed me the most was Defender because the ship disappeared every time you fired and the swarmers weren't really swarmers. The disappearing ship really put me off at first but I got past that and ended up playing it a lot.  I rolled both the score and the level counter playing at diff A. It was a very playable game.  I even found the Easter egg myself. Clocked up a huge number of hours on it. 

 

Stargate / Defender 2, like Ms. Pacman, was a huge improvement over the 1st game.

Edited October 10, 2023 by davyK

[zzip]

3 hours ago, davyK said:

I defend it, but can understand why people who were really into the arcade game were disappointed by Pacman. Even the colour scheme alone was a bizarre choice but Atari management's rule was only space games have a black background. That alone would made such a difference re the look of the game and the visibility of those multiplexed , flickery ghosts.   The flicker against that background really compromised the enjoyment. Even on a CRT with phosphor effects the ghosts were hard to see at times.  But for those who weren't really into the arcade game and didn't play it that much, the game was playable as it had most of the elements albeit presented minimally.

 

The arcade port that disappointed me the most was Defender because the ship disappeared every time you fired and the swarmers weren't really swarmers. The disappearing ship really put me off at first but I got past that and ended up playing it a lot.  I rolled both the score and the level counter playing at diff A. It was a very playable game.  I even found the Easter egg myself. Clocked up a huge number of hours on it. 

 

Stargate / Defender 2, like Ms. Pacman, was a huge improvement over the 1st game.

I was a big fan of Arcade Defender, and the 2600 version was kind of a letdown, but it didn't annoy me as much as Pac-Man.   I felt like they tried on Defender and hardware got in the way.   Pac-Man never felt like they tried hard enough-  they deviated from the arcade in ways that weren't necessary, like the color scheme you mention.

[Laner]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

I was a big fan of Arcade Defender, and the 2600 version was kind of a letdown, but it didn't annoy me as much as Pac-Man.   I felt like they tried on Defender and hardware got in the way.   Pac-Man never felt like they tried hard enough-  they deviated from the arcade in ways that weren't necessary, like the color scheme you mention.

 

I never thought about it that way, but that's a good point.  2600 Defender's shortcomings didn't bother me nearly as much as Pac-Man's. 

Edited October 10, 2023 by Laner

[NE146]

Yeah I was fully familiar with arcade Defender and I remember when I first tried the 2600 version, you could feel there was definitely an effort at trying to bring the arcade game home to the VCS. It ended up being one of my favorite games to play for some time.

 

Pac-Man on the other hand, I've NEVER said it was a bad game or even that I "hated" it (I did not, and played it a ton), what it was, was a big shock how much it failed to bring home any essence of the arcade game.. unlike Defender above for example. Or Missile Command, or even Crystal Castles! None of those will fool anyone as being the arcade versions, but we all knew they were the arcade games scaled down for home play on the VCS. At a time when the arcade games were the kings of the video game world, we all liked the home ports to try and get a little of that excitement for each of those games in the comfort of your home.   You never got that feeling at all from Pac-Man though. 

 

 

 

Edited October 10, 2023 by NE146

[Flyindrew]

1 hour ago, NE146 said:

At a time when the arcade games were the kings of the video game world, we all liked the home ports to try and get a little of that excitement for each of those games in the comfort of your home.   You never got that feeling at all from Pac-Man though. 

 

 

 

For me the absolute worst 2600 of all time (by 100 miles) was the Coleco port of Donkey Kong Jr. What your saying about Pac Man (and I agree), the same could be said for Dk JR.

 

True 2600 Defender varied greatly from the arcade port, but it was still fun to play. Some people even prefer the 2600 port over the arcade.

[Atarian7]

Skeet Shoot

 

[Jess Ragan]

Chase the Chuckwagon was pretty lousy, all things considered. 2600 Pac-Man wasn't great, but at least there's some depth to the gameplay. Chase is slow and uneventful... your one and only goal is to reach the Chuckwagon. Your one and only enemy is a thing that bounces around the playfield and stuns you. Your one and only desire is to take the cartridge out of your 2600 and end your suffering.

 

I'm not a fan of Apollo's Infiltrate either, which looks, sounds, and plays like a six year old's attempt at Elevator Action. Talk about a "dumb waiter."

[zzip]

2 hours ago, NE146 said:

Pac-Man on the other hand, I've NEVER said it was a bad game or even that I "hated" it (I did not, and played it a ton), what it was, was a big shock how much it failed to bring home any essence of the arcade game.. unlike Defender above for example. Or Missile Command, or even Crystal Castles! None of those will fool anyone as being the arcade versions, but we all knew they were the arcade games scaled down for home play on the VCS. At a time when the arcade games were the kings of the video game world, we all liked the home ports to try and get a little of that excitement for each of those games in the comfort of your home.   You never got that feeling at all from Pac-Man though. 

 

Crystal Castles is another good example.   Sure the levels look funny,  it's hard to do proper isometric on the 2600.    But it's true to the other arcade elements so it kind of works...

[davyK]

Worth noting re Crystal Castles that sanity had broken out in Atari and they were allowed a black background. 

[davyK]

23 hours ago, zzip said:

I was a big fan of Arcade Defender, and the 2600 version was kind of a letdown, but it didn't annoy me as much as Pac-Man.   I felt like they tried on Defender and hardware got in the way.   Pac-Man never felt like they tried hard enough-  they deviated from the arcade in ways that weren't necessary, like the color scheme you mention.

Trouble is, Stargate/Defender 2 was far better. Taking your Pacman argument and applying it to Defender , one could argue that Bob Polaro didn't try hard enough.  Stargate was an 8K ROM? So, like, Pacman, Defender having 4K is a genuine reason for a lower quality port.

 

Defender's gameplay was hampered by the 4K restriction and the 1 button controller - as smart bombs and hyperspace were effectively useless in the port (which isn't that damaging given that it's nowhere near as hard as the arcade game). Defender didn't have all the gameplay features (you can't carry > 1 humanoid) while you can in Stargate. At least Pacman had all the game rules in place.

 

Of course Defender is a far more complex game than Pacman so maybe I'm being unfair to compare the two.

Edited October 11, 2023 by davyK

[jerseystyle]

My most hated game was Marine Wars. To this day I’ll never forget being sooo sucked in by the awesome cover from behind the counter, with no pics on the back of the box of course!

 

 

saving my allowance for a month to buy it… and getting this…

 

 

To this day I feel ripped off.
 

I actually told this story to my daughter last weekend when we were talking about not getting tricked/disappointed by commercials.

 

Edited October 11, 2023 by jerseystyle

[zzip]

1 hour ago, davyK said:

Trouble is, Stargate/Defender 2 was far better. Taking your Pacman argument and applying it to Defender , one could argue that Bob Polaro didn't try hard enough.  Stargate was an 8K ROM? So, like, Pacman, Defender having 4K is a genuine reason for a lower quality port.

No.   My argument against Pac-man is there are a number of obvious design decisions that were not the result of being limited to 4K nor hardware limitations.   There is no cost to getting the colors at least close to the arcade.  No cost to not giving Pac-man an eye.   No cost to shaping the sprite correctly (as long as the height is the same)  negligable cost to creating sounds closer to the arcade and so on.     Just a number of small changes to show that Frye at least respected the source material would have gone a long way.

There are other changes that would help: maze design, tunnels, fruits,  but I acknowledged they may come at a cost.

 

Now if I'm looking at 2600 Defender for easy design fixes, the most obvious the the shape of the Lander enemy, it's not supposed to be hat-shaped.   I think the arcade sprite is taller, so that might cost a few bytes to fix.

other issues:

Swarmers that don't swarm - would need a fair bit of code to get right, might be a 4K issue

Smart Bombs/Hyperspace - As you said it's due to the CX40 having one-button, some less than ideal trade-off is required here.

Ship disappearing while firing - might be fixable in 4K, but would probably require reworking the kernel, so not the kind of easy fix that can be done in an afternoon.   But this might be the single best fix to the game if they could pull it off.

Cityscape vs Mountain Scape - Back then I chalked this up to 2600 limitations, but seeing that Stargate has mountains, guess not.    I don't know how easy the change is, but since the city is only changing the height of fairly wide buildings, vs mountains that have a higher horizontal resolution, I think this changed would have a cost 

 

So maybe the Defender port could have been slightly better and been under 4K

[mdoerty]

Anything by Mythicon: Fire Fly, Sorcerer, Star Fox. They sold for $10 new and have always been borderline unplayable at best. 

 

[davyK]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

No.   My argument against Pac-man is there are a number of obvious design decisions that were not the result of being limited to 4K nor hardware limitations.   There is no cost to getting the colors at least close to the arcade.  No cost to not giving Pac-man an eye.   No cost to shaping the sprite correctly (as long as the height is the same)  negligable cost to creating sounds closer to the arcade and so on.     Just a number of small changes to show that Frye at least respected the source material would have gone a long way.

There are other changes that would help: maze design, tunnels, fruits,  but I acknowledged they may come at a cost.

 

Now if I'm looking at 2600 Defender for easy design fixes, the most obvious the the shape of the Lander enemy, it's not supposed to be hat-shaped.   I think the arcade sprite is taller, so that might cost a few bytes to fix.

other issues:

Swarmers that don't swarm - would need a fair bit of code to get right, might be a 4K issue

Smart Bombs/Hyperspace - As you said it's due to the CX40 having one-button, some less than ideal trade-off is required here.

Ship disappearing while firing - might be fixable in 4K, but would probably require reworking the kernel, so not the kind of easy fix that can be done in an afternoon.   But this might be the single best fix to the game if they could pull it off.

Cityscape vs Mountain Scape - Back then I chalked this up to 2600 limitations, but seeing that Stargate has mountains, guess not.    I don't know how easy the change is, but since the city is only changing the height of fairly wide buildings, vs mountains that have a higher horizontal resolution, I think this changed would have a cost 

 

So maybe the Defender port could have been slightly better and been under 4K

 

Stargate used the 2nd controller for extra buttons which was controversial but there was no other way. Defender could have used that I suppose.

The rest aren't aren't easy fixes - would require a dramatic redesign. It was likely the best that could be done with the resources. I think the swarmers in Stargate were done in quite a clever way - was surprised it was managed at all to be honest.

 

The mountain scape requires more complex collision detection when it comes to humanoid management. And it makes the display kernel considerably more complex.

 

The ship disappearing is a fundamental design issue - I'm guessing its using one player sprite to do both ship and laser so the game could only display the ship or the laser shot in the same frame. Maybe if the ship had a more traditional shot style - like a bullet/missile then it would have worked better being able to use the player missile sprite but of course the distinctive Defender shot would have been missing.

 

The humanoids in original Defender are a bit of a kludge. They sit in fixed positions and if your ship is holding one then the landers can't capture another one on the ground - that's a significant difference to the original game. You can't shoot them either. It's still damn impressive though.

 

Original Defender is still impressive for its time but I was pretty disappointed with it even though I did end up playing it to death. Maybe as disappointed as you were with Pacman.

 

We've gone back and forth re Pacman quite a bit. I do see your points but the devil is in the detail re what you suggest would have been possible in 4K at that time - without deep diving into the source code I doubt we will ever agree on that issue.*   Maybe like Defender it would have required a fundamental design change instead of the relative small changes you identify.

 

The 4K homebrew proves what you suggest is technically possible but back then there just weren't advanced techniques to utilise as there were when it was built. I'm guessing the homebrew game has a fundamentally different architecture/approach to what Frye did back in 80/81. 

 

 

* and life is too short! 

Edited October 11, 2023 by davyK

[Zonie]

On 10/10/2023 at 3:24 AM, davyK said:

I defend it, but can understand why people who were really into the arcade game were disappointed by Pacman. Even the colour scheme alone was a bizarre choice but Atari management's rule was only space games have a black background. That alone would made such a difference re the look of the game and the visibility of those multiplexed , flickery ghosts.   The flicker against that background really compromised the enjoyment. Even on a CRT with phosphor effects the ghosts were hard to see at times.  But for those who weren't really into the arcade game and didn't play it that much, the game was playable as it had most of the elements albeit presented minimally.

 

The arcade port that disappointed me the most was Defender because the ship disappeared every time you fired and the swarmers weren't really swarmers. The disappearing ship really put me off at first but I got past that and ended up playing it a lot.  I rolled both the score and the level counter playing at diff A. It was a very playable game.  I even found the Easter egg myself. Clocked up a huge number of hours on it. 

 

Stargate / Defender 2, like Ms. Pacman, was a huge improvement over the 1st game.

I loved 2600 Defender and played the hell out of it. Defender was one of the arcade games I played the most because our local grocery store had one. I rode my bike every Saturday 2 miles in 110* heat to play that thing.

 

The Cityscape was probably due to 4K limitations, but It made more sense to have the landers "beam" people up out of a city than wandering out in the mountains. The little Beam up feature was cool. No other version has that. Just pretend you are flying over Caprica.

 

I was surprised that the scanner was present.

 

On 10/11/2023 at 8:05 AM, zzip said:

No.   My argument against Pac-man is there are a number of obvious design decisions that were not the result of being limited to 4K nor hardware limitations.   There is no cost to getting the colors at least close to the arcade.  No cost to not giving Pac-man an eye.   No cost to shaping the sprite correctly (as long as the height is the same)  negligable cost to creating sounds closer to the arcade and so on.     Just a number of small changes to show that Frye at least respected the source material would have gone a long way.

There are other changes that would help: maze design, tunnels, fruits,  but I acknowledged they may come at a cost.

 

Now if I'm looking at 2600 Defender for easy design fixes, the most obvious the the shape of the Lander enemy, it's not supposed to be hat-shaped.   I think the arcade sprite is taller, so that might cost a few bytes to fix.

other issues:

Swarmers that don't swarm - would need a fair bit of code to get right, might be a 4K issue

Smart Bombs/Hyperspace - As you said it's due to the CX40 having one-button, some less than ideal trade-off is required here.

Ship disappearing while firing - might be fixable in 4K, but would probably require reworking the kernel, so not the kind of easy fix that can be done in an afternoon.   But this might be the single best fix to the game if they could pull it off.

Cityscape vs Mountain Scape - Back then I chalked this up to 2600 limitations, but seeing that Stargate has mountains, guess not.    I don't know how easy the change is, but since the city is only changing the height of fairly wide buildings, vs mountains that have a higher horizontal resolution, I think this changed would have a cost 

 

So maybe the Defender port could have been slightly better and been under 4K

Yes, the swarmers were lame, and the SB/HS  activation was nearly useless. Why they didn't use the Keyboard/VTP/KC for this game with a joystick is beyond me, but they would probably have to sell it like Star Raiders, with a pack-in VTP. Maybe nobody thought of it?

IMO, Atari really should have released some sort of arcade stick with extra buttons like the NES advantage either 7800 style wiring or using all 12 inputs in the keyboard matrix yet mapped to joystick positions and 3-4 buttons too perhaps, or a game pad, but game pads were not really a thing yet, and I'm not sure how much overhead it would take to read the matrix and also have minimal to no lag on the controls. IIRC Defender was a $30+ game so asking people to buy another controller may have been out of the question. They had no choice with Star Raiders.

 

I got over the ship disappearing thing. It's like an extra windshield pillar in a minivan, you don't notice it after a while. I still play it, probably more so than stargate, but I have built my new controller for Stargate.

 

Quite honestly, it surprises me that nobody has made a controller schem using the 12 input matrix for direction control and buttons... Atari or otherwise.

 

All moot perhaps, as the creator of the Mega adapter seems to have created a serial port protocol complete with code to implement it. Bravo for that. I hope to see it put into use in future 2600 and 7800 games.

 

 

Edited October 13, 2023 by Zonie

[Lauren Tyler]

To be honest, there are a lot of stinkers out there, most of which I can't think of off the top of my head.  Honestly, I'm sure a lot of them have already been mentioned.

You don't have to agree with me on this, but I feel Laser Blast just isn't as fun as it could be.  I remember getting this from my grandfather because he had an extra copy.  I thought it was fun when I was younger, but now it's a bit too repetitive.  Sure, there's the force fields that limit your mobility in the later stages, but other than that it's blast three mobile laser cannons, lather rinse and repeat.

[davyK]

Laser Blast was always repetitive.

[Laner]

15 hours ago, Lauren Tyler said:

To be honest, there are a lot of stinkers out there, most of which I can't think of off the top of my head.  Honestly, I'm sure a lot of them have already been mentioned.

You don't have to agree with me on this, but I feel Laser Blast just isn't as fun as it could be.  I remember getting this from my grandfather because he had an extra copy.  I thought it was fun when I was younger, but now it's a bit too repetitive.  Sure, there's the force fields that limit your mobility in the later stages, but other than that it's blast three mobile laser cannons, lather rinse and repeat.

 

Yes - Laser Blast was an uncharacteristic miss from Activision/David Crane

[+davidcalgary29]

Tod Frye was inviting criticism of Pac-Man at the AA booth today; one brave soul finally agreed with him that it was "disappointing". I loved it myself as a kid and told him so...and added that I HATE Defender on the 2600. He said that he lost a metaphorical coin toss and lost out on Defender, which he was a big fan of, and got Pac-Man instead. I'm sure that anecdote is well-known, but still.

[Zonie]

Bummer, I didn't realize Todd Frye was at the AA both. I did get a chance to talk to Howard Scott Warsaw quite a bit a couple of times. I think he's a super cool guy. He'd be fun to work with. Got his book and DVD. He also doesn't charge for autographs...I didn't even think about bringing all my carts.

[Zonie]

Here's a thought. What would everyone think if the original Frye Pac Man was changed only slightly to have a black background and blue maze as the ONLY changes? Has it been done? Is anyone here capable of making that change as I presume it may be as simple as changing two register values? I've never coded for the 2600 otherwise, I'd probably try it. Just curious how much less annoying the game would be with better colors.

[+save2600]

15 hours ago, Zonie said:

Here's a thought. What would everyone think if the original Frye Pac Man was changed only slightly to have a black background and blue maze as the ONLY changes? Has it been done? Is anyone here capable of making that change as I presume it may be as simple as changing two register values? I've never coded for the 2600 otherwise, I'd probably try it. Just curious how much less annoying the game would be with better colors.

 

...this is close to what you're asking, but also with some color changes to the ghosts that makes them more solid/stand out more.

[NE146]

4 hours ago, Zonie said:

Here's a thought. What would everyone think if the original Frye Pac Man was changed only slightly to have a black background and blue maze as the ONLY changes? Has it been done? Is anyone here capable of making that change as I presume it may be as simple as changing two register values? I've never coded for the 2600 otherwise, I'd probably try it. Just curious how much less annoying the game would be with better colors.

it's been done a few times by various folks.

The most crazy one being Nukey Shay's Pacman8k where he just kept going and going to mod the game until it had intermissions and everything while still keeping the 2600 maze..

 

Re: whether 2600 Pacman made you "feel" like you were playing a home VCS version of the arcade game or not, the most earnest embodiment of what we were all hoping for when it came to "a Pac-Man for the Atari" back in the day, is I think, Raindog's 1999 hack of Ms. Pacman. i.e. Not much modern frills added.. simply altering the maze, etc. to change it to the game as it was, to Pacman. Seeing how the Ms.Pac came out around 1983(?) for the VCS it's not far fetched to think of the same type of arcade closeness for Pac-man in that same timeframe on our 2600s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 16, 2023 by NE146

[+GoldLeader]

I'll go with Laser Blast also...Because everything on the box made it look like it'd be good.   The reason it really gets a pass from me is because it was the first Activision game (that interested me) that I saw on store shelves,  and my first "third party" game BITD.  I knew Activision had potential,  so (given future titles like Megamania, Pitfall!, River Raid, and Spider Fighter)  Thank God I stuck with them!...I'll also add that stuff like Mythicon games were never on store shelves in my area so I got them later (much later) so the disappointment was not the same as spending your own hard earned paper route money only to find out games like Tennis or Skiing were actually fun and a game with ships and Lasers and explosions was...ASS!

[+Random Terrain]

3 hours ago, NE146 said:

Seeing how the Ms.Pac came out around 1983(?) for the VCS it's not far fetched to think of the same type of arcade closeness for Pac-man in that same timeframe on our 2600s.

 

Right, Ms. Pac-Man was released February 1983.

 

https://www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-history-1983.html#ms_pac_man