Attention Pac-Man Haters

[Room 34]

I still hold by my theory that 2600 Pac-Man started out as a generic maze-chomper game, and then Atari got the Pac-Man license, and slapped it on the generic game.

Isn't the history of this game pretty well known? I thought they got the license, stuck Tod Frye with the task of cranking it out in short order, and he did so... with a vengeance.

 

 

Oh yeah, its well known. And what you said has been established.

 

 

But my version of the events make the game more playable.

Ahh... well, that makes sense then.

[Gabriel]

I'll chime in with this observation again.

 

Pac-Man was the last of an era of arcade adaptations where no one cared if it was actually very close to the arcade or not.

 

See, the world fell in love with Space Invaders, but they apparrently only fell in love with the basics of the game, sliding back and forth and shooting invaders. The Atari 2600 version has the wrong colors (it's color instead of B&W). It has the wrong number and design of aliens. The counting strategies from the arcade are gone. Yet, just about everyone agrees that Space Invaders is a great game for the 2600 despite the fact that it's little better than what an unauthorized clone could be.

 

My theory is that the world fell in love with Pac-Man the character rather than the game itself. Everyone knew the music and the look. Everyone was familiar with the idea of patterns, while most people were unaware of the counting shot tactics in Space Invaders. Otherwise, Pac-Man is no different from Space Invaders in general. The basics of the game are preserved. You eat dots and avoid monsters, occasionally turning the tables by eating the energizer. Like Space Invaders, it's just as good an interpretation of the game.

 

And it sold phenomenally well. Let's not forget that.

 

But people bitched because the things that made the game popular weren't in the game. Pac-Man wasn't the same character, nor were the ghosts. Patterns developed for the arcade game couldn't work in the slightest. People started wanting direct ports of arcade games, not crude adaptations. The Colecovision was showing this was possible (at least visually), so why wasn't Atari doing it?

 

Ports after Pac-Man started trying to preserve the character of the arcade game. Notice that Ms. Pac has a little bow and the colors of the monsters are made more plain, and fruit is back! That was apparrently enough preservation of the original, because Ms Pac seems pretty universally praised.

 

But Pac-Man had basically marked a new bar of how dissimilar a game could get from its arcade counterpart while still carrying the name.

[Room 34]

To go with that tangent... how many people, like me, thought the 2600 version of Space Invaders was BETTER than the arcade version? As with Pac-Man, I played the 2600 version long before I ever played it in an arcade. (Gimme a break, I was 8.) But unlike Pac-Man, where, upon first playing it in the arcade, I thought "Whoa, man why does the Atari version suck so much?" (yes, I said "suck" when I was , when I first played arcade S.I. my thought was "Whoa, why does THIS suck so much?"

[godzillajoe]

I was about 9 when the VCS Space Invaders came out.

 

Not sure of the exact release date

 

Do you really think 90% of the home users cared about stuff like 'counting strategy?'

 

I only learned about that almost 30 years later on this site

 

It was the closest thing you got at the time outside of the arcade

 

And unless you were super video game nerd guy as a 9 year old, who cared?

 

Maybe some older players knew of the secret tips and tricks and strategies, but to a kid back then Space Invaders was brilliant.

[accousticguitar]

Here are a few reasons that Space Invaders didn't suck on the 2600:

1. The sounds are not horribly annoying (like Pac Man).

2. It doesn't flicker so bad you can't look at it (like Pac Man).

3. It looks quite similar to the original (unlike Pac Man).

4. The gameplay is excellent (unlike Pac Man).

 

To sum it up, Pac Man assaults the eyes and ears (Space Invaders does not, and is fun to play). Thankfully, the other 3 senses are safe from Pac Man.

[JacobZu7zu7]

shame there's no color ghosts and different mazes to work with.

 

The ghosts are different colors, or would be if they didn't flicker at 15Hz. Try playing the game in an emulator and pause it (if you use the Stella debugger, you can advance one frame at a time).

 

Only having one maze isn't really a flaw, since arcade Pac-Man only has the one maze...

 

Yeah, I know that. I think the arcade version was nailed by NES. Pac-man.

[JacobZu7zu7]

To go with that tangent... how many people, like me, thought the 2600 version of Space Invaders was BETTER than the arcade version? As with Pac-Man, I played the 2600 version long before I ever played it in an arcade. (Gimme a break, I was 8.) But unlike Pac-Man, where, upon first playing it in the arcade, I thought "Whoa, man why does the Atari version suck so much?" (yes, I said "suck" when I was , when I first played arcade S.I. my thought was "Whoa, why does THIS suck so much?"

 

I had the exact same experience. I played Pac-man ONLY on 2600 and thought (at first)

"ewww this is bad" "Where is the fruit??" "Why are the ghosts appear as all one yellow color?"

 

And, I really didn't like it for years, but now sometimes.. I like to play it.

I'm getting soft...

Either that or I have unpredictable taste in games.

[Urchlay]

I think the arcade version was nailed by NES. Pac-man.

 

Yah, the Tengen NES Pac-Man is just about perfect, especially if you have a NES joystick to play it with (Pac-Man sucks with D-pad controllers).

 

(Wasn't Tengen the name Atari used for their unlicensed NES releases?)

[Inky]

<tangent> why DOESN'T Space Invaders flicker?</tangent>

[Video]

I think the arcade version was nailed by NES. Pac-man.

 

Yah, the Tengen NES Pac-Man is just about perfect, especially if you have a NES joystick to play it with (Pac-Man sucks with D-pad controllers).

 

(Wasn't Tengen the name Atari used for their unlicensed NES releases?)

 

Yes, Tengen is Atari's unofficial unlicensed games for the NES, the only game that had issues due to this that I'm aware of, is Tetris, which got pulled cause Nintendo got the rights to make it. Tengen games were great for the NES BTW, and among my fav NES games (RBI Baseball on of the top favorites)

 

And yes, Dpads suck on Pac-man, some game systems, the games are actually unplayable. If you ever tried useing a Master System or GameGear D pad, you'll find the games unplayable. I don't know what they do, but they won't register up or down.... POS, fixed with a Stick though. BTW, is tengen Pac-man on the NES the same as SMS pac-man? (you got to try SMS Ms Pac0man too)

 

BTW, Pac-Man, and Ms Pac-man are actually unplayable on the GameGear, I actually broke one gamegear trying to play it, and no it's not the gamegear's fault, as all other games worked fine on it.

 

 

<tangent> why DOESN'T Space Invaders flicker?</tangent>

The reason that sprites on Space invaders don't flicker, is because as far as the system is concerened, it's only showing two sprites per scan line. Yes, there are 6, but their multiplexed, 3 per player, and the system easily handles this.

 

As for Pac-man, I don't know why the sprites flicker, it only shows one on the screen at a time, but due to them not useually being on the same scanline, you could still have done it with relatively little flicekre, more like Ms Pac-man. That's antoher reason that I'm lead to believe the ghosts flicker on purpose, rather than on accident. If they programed the game so it didn't flicker, like Ms Pac-man, the ghosts would have mostly stayed solid, and even shown the different colors even though they were pastel and very close together.

 

BTW, the flickering isn't any worse on Pac-man, than, say, Asteroids. IF you played the game on the actual hardware, on an actual TV, it wouldn't bother you, I guarantee it, if it does still, like I said, play in B/W mode with a black background and blue maze, the problem will go away.

Edited September 24, 2006 by Video

[Atariboy2600]

I posted this on Pac-Mam before but uits should be repeated,

 

"For years many of us wanted to see a better Pac-Man arcade port cuase we gone thouth the horror of the 1982 Pac-Man for the 2600 and to this day many homebrew to hacking trying to get the right Pac-Man arcade feel for the old 2600 from Nukey Shay to Pac-Man Plus are all trying to capture the right arcade port and I think of all the programer DEBRO may got it right with his VCS Tech Demo of Pac-Man and it looks soo good it almost looks like the 5200 game heres the two side by side and you can see even the Ghost are the same look

 

Its also like reliving the same lost battle tactical or reliving the same lost baseball game to try and see how it would have came out diffent and Pac-Man to me is that same felling in if you had to go back in 82 how would had came out diffent."

[Urchlay]

 

Yes, Tengen is Atari's unofficial unlicensed games for the NES, the only game that had issues due to this that I'm aware of, is Tetris, which got pulled cause Nintendo got the rights to make it.

 

Which is sad, because Tengen NES Tetris blows Nintendo Tetris away. Unfortunately, I've only ever played Tengen Tetris in emulation... but I do have the emulator displaying on a TV, so it doesn't feel so much like a PC (even though it is).

 

And yes, Dpads suck on Pac-man, some game systems, the games are actually unplayable. If you ever tried useing a Master System or GameGear D pad, you'll find the games unplayable. I don't know what they do, but they won't register up or down.... POS, fixed with a Stick though. BTW, is tengen Pac-man on the NES the same as SMS pac-man? (you got to try SMS Ms Pac0man too)

 

BTW, Pac-Man, and Ms Pac-man are actually unplayable on the GameGear, I actually broke one gamegear trying to play it, and no it's not the gamegear's fault, as all other games worked fine on it.

 

Ouch.

 

I didn't even know Pac-Man existed for SMS, will have to try it out. I just recently got a Master System, only have 15 games for it so far.

 

I've got a Sega Genesis joystick, presumably it'll work on the SMS. Probably even an Atari joystick works for SMS Pac-Man, since it shouldn't need both buttons.

 

BTW, the flickering isn't any worse on Pac-man, than, say, Asteroids. IF you played the game on the actual hardware, on an actual TV, it wouldn't bother you, I guarantee it, if it does still, like I said, play in B/W mode with a black background and blue maze, the problem will go away.

 

The Atari Pac-Man flicker doesn't bother me in the sense that it gives me headaches or anything... it bothers me because it makes the ghosts look like they're all the same color (on most TVs), and because it looks like crap.... and yes, because I played a lot of Atari 400 Pac-Man, which doesn't flicker at all.

 

For some reason, the flicker in Asteroids never bothered me at all, even back in 1981. Back then, I would have said the asteroids and ghosts were "ghostly" or "transparent" (I didn't know flicker was called flicker, but I could see it fine).

 

I do agree that it's a lot less ugly on real hardware and a TV than it is on an emulator.

[supercat]

As for Pac-man, I don't know why the sprites flicker, it only shows one on the screen at a time, but due to them not useually being on the same scanline, you could still have done it with relatively little flicekre, more like Ms Pac-man. That's antoher reason that I'm lead to believe the ghosts flicker on purpose, rather than on accident. If they programed the game so it didn't flicker, like Ms Pac-man, the ghosts would have mostly stayed solid, and even shown the different colors even though they were pastel and very close together.

 

The Atari 2600 has two hardware "player" sprites. Though it is possible to move the sprites horizontally in the middle of the screen (a technique that had already been demonstrated in Air Sea Battle in 1977) nearly all games that did so, up to that divided the screen into horizontal "zones"; within each zone, each player sprite could only be used for a single object. Further, any particular type of object would always be displayed using the same player sprite.

 

Ms. Pacman (which of course post-dates Pac Man) seems to divide the screen into a number of fixed-sized zones, but allows objects to move freely between them; any of the five objects may be assigned to either player sprite as required.

 

Incidentally, such sprite sharing requires more RAM; this is probably why Pac Man allows a two-player option but Ms. Pacman does not.

 

BTW, the flickering isn't any worse on Pac-man, than, say, Asteroids. IF you played the game on the actual hardware, on an actual TV, it wouldn't bother you, I guarantee it, if it does still, like I said, play in B/W mode with a black background and blue maze, the problem will go away.

 

Asteroids flickers at 30Hz; Pac Man flickers at 15Hz. Huge perceptual difference.

[supercat]

K.C. Munchkin beat 2600 Pac-Man's ass like pair of bongos, that's why.

 

As an Odyssey2 owner, I must say I felt pretty good when I saw Atari 2600 Pac Man versus my system's K.C. Munchkin. When I read that Atari was suing Philips, I was rather negative toward them: obviously they were suing because rather than make something good they'd rather sue the company that did.

[Atariboy2600]

K.C. Munchkin beat 2600 Pac-Man's ass like pair of bongos, that's why.

 

As an Odyssey2 owner, I must say I felt pretty good when I saw Atari 2600 Pac Man versus my system's K.C. Munchkin. When I read that Atari was suing Philips, I was rather negative toward them: obviously they were suing because rather than make something good they'd rather sue the company that did.

 

 

Whats worst that year when Odyssey sold K.C. Munchkin it wa there best selling game ever and was making the most money then any of there other games before Atari came and sue the ass off of Magnavox and won at the same time they sold there 2600 Pac-Man and everyone hated Atari to this day Atari oh well.

[Video]

I posted this on Pac-Mam before but uits should be repeated,

 

"For years many of us wanted to see a better Pac-Man arcade port cuase we gone thouth the horror of the 1982 Pac-Man for the 2600 and to this day many homebrew to hacking trying to get the right Pac-Man arcade feel for the old 2600 from Nukey Shay to Pac-Man Plus are all trying to capture the right arcade port and I think of all the programer DEBRO may got it right with his VCS Tech Demo of Pac-Man and it looks soo good it almost looks like the 5200 game heres the two side by side and you can see even the Ghost are the same look

 

Its also like reliving the same lost battle tactical or reliving the same lost baseball game to try and see how it would have came out diffent and Pac-Man to me is that same felling in if you had to go back in 82 how would had came out diffent."

 

That looks a lot like the Ebvision version of Pac-man, which is cool, but what's with the ghosts not remotely following the maze? (in that shot, two of the ghosts are actually imbedded in the maze walls)

 

As for Asteroids being 30 hz, that might be true, till yous start firing, and all of a sudden, you can have your ship, and up to 5 NON multiplexed asteroids on the same scanline. All of a sudden, it can actually drop below Pac-Mans flicker rate. It looks perfect at first cause you start with only 2 asteroids on a scanline (which is 20 hz, BTW, not 30,unless you exclude the player ship)

 

What really makes asteroid look good im comparison, is the fact the ships and rocks are very bright, and on a pitch black background, but then, youc an get the same affect on pac-man by hitting the B/W switch. Apparently, with all the bitching, it seems to many people are to lazy to do that though. :\

[mos6507]

K.C. Munchkin beat 2600 Pac-Man's ass like pair of bongos, that's why.

 

As an Odyssey2 owner, I must say I felt pretty good when I saw Atari 2600 Pac Man versus my system's K.C. Munchkin. When I read that Atari was suing Philips, I was rather negative toward them: obviously they were suing because rather than make something good they'd rather sue the company that did.

 

Yeah, but the problem was that KC Munchkin was one of the only good O^2 games, period. There were plenty of 2600 titles to offset the bad ones.

[kirin jensen]

K.C. Munchkin beat 2600 Pac-Man's ass like pair of bongos, that's why.

 

As an Odyssey2 owner, I must say I felt pretty good when I saw Atari 2600 Pac Man versus my system's K.C. Munchkin. When I read that Atari was suing Philips, I was rather negative toward them: obviously they were suing because rather than make something good they'd rather sue the company that did.

 

Yeah, but the problem was that KC Munchkin was one of the only good O^2 games, period. There were plenty of 2600 titles to offset the bad ones.

Uh... yeah... Let's see:

 

Turtles

KC Munchkin

Attack of the Timelord

KC's Crazy Chase

Killer Bees

UFO

Pick Axe Pete

Freedom Fighters

Demon Attack

Atlantis

Smithereens

Monkeyshines

 

Alright, that's 12 right there. I haven't listed homebrews, prototypes or Master Strategy Games. There were less than 70 releases for the O2. That's about one out of six, a pretty good ratio.

 

Unless you're completely Atarded, there are less than 100 games that would qualify as classics when you take away the nostalgia factor. There are about 800 games for the Atari 2600 - some of them nearly or completely unplayable. That unplayable factor alone should give a clue to you, but let's look at the ratio of crap to good: one in eight.

 

I pronounce you Atarded.

[Paranoid]

Atarded. Heh.

 

Heheheh...

 

Man... that fits SO many posters on this board. I'm gonna have to remember that.

 

ANYhow... um... now what was I gonna say...

 

Oh... Space Invaders... the difference is, the whole concept is a little more abstract. The original was a very basic playfield, very basic formation of enemies, doing a very basic range of motions. When you saw the 2600 version... it looked *more or less* faithful to that. It might not have been spot on, but, you would have had to have the two side by side to really note the differences. You *knew* it wasn't arcade perfect, but it was also CLEARLY Space Invaders... and, it was the first time you could have a mega hit arcade game at HOME... remember, this was years before horrible Coleco tabletop LED games would be popular Christmas items... And, before anyone had established any idea of what the 2600 was capable of.

 

Pac Man, on the other hand, came after Imagic and Activision had raised the bar on expectations, and only bore a very superficial resemblance to it's namesake. Dots had become dashes, powerups were squares... the maze was this horrible repeating pattern of right angles. The colors were completely off. I personally learned to enjoy the game, from the get-go, but I also knew it was more of an interepetation of Pac Man than the real thing. If Pac Man had meant more to me as an arcade game, I might have been more upset. I was still relieved when I got a 5200 and could enjoy decent versions of this and other titles.

[Nukey Shay]

I posted this on Pac-Mam before but uits should be repeated,

 

"For years many of us wanted to see a better Pac-Man arcade port cuase we gone thouth the horror of the 1982 Pac-Man for the 2600 and to this day many homebrew to hacking trying to get the right Pac-Man arcade feel for the old 2600 from Nukey Shay to Pac-Man Plus are all trying to capture the right arcade port and I think of all the programer DEBRO may got it right with his VCS Tech Demo of Pac-Man and it looks soo good it almost looks like the 5200 game heres the two side by side and you can see even the Ghost are the same look

 

Its also like reliving the same lost battle tactical or reliving the same lost baseball game to try and see how it would have came out diffent and Pac-Man to me is that same felling in if you had to go back in 82 how would had came out diffent."

 

That looks a lot like the Ebvision version of Pac-man, which is cool, but what's with the ghosts not remotely following the maze? (in that shot, two of the ghosts are actually imbedded in the maze walls)

 

It's a kernal demo. IIRC, Dennis had been working on the sprite multiplex routines...so he just had all the objects appear/move without AI involved.

And the reason it looks like the Ebivision version is that there's pretty much only 1 way to get differing colors between the maze and dots (unless you used missile objects as dots as Alien does). And that is to reset the playfield color on those lines. Of course, you could still mix in the maze walls to eliminate the blank lines...but the maze would still share the dot color for that entire scanline. Self-modifying code could probably fix that, but this is difficult to do on a native 2600 that only has 128 bytes of ram memory to work with.

 

To the topic...high expectations ruined the game for a lot of people (myself included). At the time, we'd gotten used to home games playing very similar to their arcade counterparts. And due to the length of time that Atari was bragging about releasing the game (which was over a year IIRC), it should have been better. Heck, most ripoff titles released BEFORE Atari's version were better.

 

In Tod Frye's defense however, he reportedly didn't get what he needed from Atari (F8 bankswitching)...so we never really saw his version of the game...just the one that the Corp. gave limited resources to, and that was already sliding behind schedule.

[PressureCooker2600]

:bonk: :bonk: :bonk: :bonk: :bonk: :bonk:

 

grates your nerves after about an hour

[BassGuitari]

Atari 2600 Pac-Man is a sufferer of what I like to call "Alien 3 Syndrome:"

 

The game was doomed from the beginning. The production was troubled and controlled more by the suits than by people that cared about a quality game. Then, it was released to expectations it couldn't possibly live up to (the 2600 obviously can do better Pac-Man games, but apparently no one at Atari knew that yet). In terms of quality, Pac-Man was, in a way, a victim of its own popularity. The stakes were just too high. And, as Nukey pointed out, we never really saw the "director's" version of the game.

 

As it stands, Pac-Man is relatively solid when its production problems are taken into consideration. It is certainly flawed, but it is a worthy part of the Atari 2600 legacy...especially when compared to games like Skeet Shoot, Sorcerer, or Math Gran Prix.

[rheffera]

I concur with the above. As i read some where some atari employee(david crane) while he was at atari overheard the managment say : "we can put crap in a box and sell 3 million copies..." or something like that. the suits only cared about the profit margin

Edited November 5, 2006 by rheffera

[Breakpack]

:bonk: :bonk: :bonk: :bonk: :bonk: :bonk:

 

grates your nerves after about an hour

That's not what she said................

 

[Foxsolo2000]

All I remember was that at the time when my friend Jerry got a copy straight off the press I was very envious of him for being able to afford it