Pac-Man (Atari 2600)
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 This port of Namco's hit game is the forefather of rushing game development.
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Pac-Man (パックマン, Pakkuman), is an arcade maze game developed by Namco in 1980.
In 1982, the game was released on the Atari 2600, which was released on an unfinished state. While this game is one of the greatest video games of all time, this port is considered as one of the worst video games of all time, but unlike popular belief, only has a micro portion of the video game crash of 1983.
Gameplay
The objective is to traverse a maze, consuming all the wafers within while avoiding four ghosts.
Unlike the arcade cabinet, the layout was changed to fit on the Atari 2600. The maze has a landscape orientation, the warp tunnel is located at the top and bottom as opposed to the sides and the prize at the bottom of the ghost box is a square called a vitamin worth 100 points. It's supposed to be the fruit.
Why It's Pac-Pain
- The port was developed from an unfinished prototype, this is an abysmal method to release games in the way (as this became a trend decades later), which leaves unfinished content, major problems, bugs and glitches, and poor polishment in the quality. However, Atari gave the developer only five weeks (similar to E.T.), exactly 38 days to program and work on it, when most Atari 2600 games took at least 3-4 months to make.
- The sound effects are ear-bleeding and terrible to listen to. Every time you eat a "Wafer", it plays an electric buzz that can be tiresome, and when you eat a "Power Pill", plays shooting stars that can be very annoying to the ears. To make matters worse, the start sound is very high-pitched and easily unpleasing.
- False advertising: Speaking of sounds, one of the game's commercials that was only used in Australia used sound effects from the arcade version, rather than the actual sounds from the port. The cartridge and box arts of the game are also misleading since it features all four ghosts (one eaten with only his eyes in the safe zone), but there are only two in the game.
- Poor and Overly-Ambitious marketing: Atari made over 12 million cartridges, when there were only around 10 million Atari 2600 systems sold. This lead for the poor quality control of the library.
- The artwork of Pac-Man on the cover art looks unfaithful to the source material, he also looks very weird and uncanny. Later releases of the game had the same box art but with a more faithful-looking depiction of Pac-Man about to devour a wafer, as shown on the infobox.
- Very ugly, poor and amateurish graphics of the game, there are very few palettes in the game, even for the Atari 2600 standards. Older games had better graphics and more colors than this game.
- For some reason, the game's manual changes up the names of several things. For example, the Dots are called Wafers, the Power Pellets are called Power Pills, and the Fruits are called Vitamins.
- There is only one screen in the whole game, even after completing the same level multiple times. Which is pathetically stupid for the Atari 2600 standards for such this little content, even E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial had more screens and it was released in the same year.
- The maze is completely different from the Arcade version, most likely due the technical limitations of the Atari 2600.
- Pac-Man's sprite never faces up or down, meaning while moving up or down the sprite would remain facing left or right. By that, Pac-Man would eat the Wafers by his forehead or jaw, which doesn't make sense whatsoever.
- There are only two ghosts instead of four, due to flickering (likely due to hardware limitations). Technically, there are supposed to be four, but two of them stay invisible most of the time.
- Due to the sprite limit of the Atari 2600 system, the ghosts always flicker and sometimes they become invisible, so you can never see them on the screen. This can lead to many cheap deaths.
- The "Power Pills" only stay on screen for a short time and last for a short time too, even if the difficulty switch is set to B (Easy).
Redeeming Qualities
- You get an extra life every time you finish a level.
- It spawned several homebrew ports of the original game on the Atari 2600, which are improvements over this port.
Reception
This port of Pac-Man was lambasted by critics upon release critical of the poor conversion from the arcade title. Later retrospectives considered it one of the worst products from this period of video games. Next Generation called it the "worst coin-op conversion of all time" in 1998 and attributed the mass dissatisfaction to its poor quality. In 2006, IGN's Craig Harris echoed similar statements and listed Pac-Man among his own list of the worst home console ports of arcade games. Another IGN editor, Levi Buchanan, described it as a "disastrous port", citing the color scheme and flickering ghosts.
Homebrew Ports
Pac-Man Arcade
Pac-Man Arcade was released in 1999 by Rob Kudla; it is a hack of the Atari 2600 port of Ms. Pac-Man, turning it into Pac-Man. The game was previously sold on cartridge in the AtariAge store. It was originally released under the name "A Better Pac-Man"; it was changed to "Pac-Man Arcade" for later reprints.
Pac-Man (Ebivision)
A very limited release by Ebivision in 1999. Cartridges were given away as part of a competition (?) for Pesco, another Ebivision game which was similar in gameplay to Pac-Man. Its limited release was reportedly out of legal fear.
Hack 'Em
Hack 'Em was released by Nukey Shay in 2005. It is a hacked version of the aforementioned Pesco, in attempt to recreate the near-impossible to find Ebivision Pac-Man. The game also includes ports of Pac-Man Plus and the bootleg Hangly-Man.
In 2006, Nukey Shay released Ms. Hack, which converts Hack 'Em into an advanced port of Ms. Pac-Man.
Pac-Man 4K
Pac-Man 4K is a title used by two separate - though conceptually very similar - homebrew titles. The "first" Pac-Man 4K was created by Dennis Debro in 2008; the "second" Pac-Man 4K was developed by "Dintar816" in 2015. The 2008 version was previously sold on cartridge in the AtariAge store.
Both Pac-Man 4K games are very arcade-accurate conversions of Pac-Man, developed in only 4K of cartridge memory - the same amount the original 2600 release used. A later version (of the 2015 port), titled Pac-Man 8K, doubles the memory, adding a title screen and intermissions.
In 2015, Tod Frye - the original programmer of Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 - played Pac-Man 8K at an AtariAge booth. Frye praised the port, and, understanding the technical specifications of the Atari 2600, was impressed by how Pac-Man 8K got around the 2600's limitations.
The port also appeared on the Atari Flashback Portable by AtGames.
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