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In defense of Pac-Man...


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In reference to something RandomTerrain said:

 

I read an essay once which suggested Atari's poor Pac-Man port hurt the public's confidence in video games, or at least Atari. The author compared reviews of games before and after Pac-Man. The reviews from before tended to defend games as if to justify them as a legitimate hobby; the reviews after tended to pick the game apart. Even if the game got good reviews the reviews seemed jaded; the reviewers had to remind everyone how bad Pacman was

 

Here it is: http://www.8bitrocket.com/2017/04/05/pac-man-electronic-games-magazine-and-the-exact-moment-atari-lost-the-video-game-war/

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In reference to something RandomTerrain said:

 

I read an essay once which suggested Atari's poor Pac-Man port hurt the public's confidence in video games, or at least Atari. The author compared reviews of games before and after Pac-Man. The reviews from before tended to defend games as if to justify them as a legitimate hobby; the reviews after tended to pick the game apart. Even if the game got good reviews the reviews seemed jaded; the reviewers had to remind everyone how bad Pacman was

 

Here it is: http://www.8bitrocket.com/2017/04/05/pac-man-electronic-games-magazine-and-the-exact-moment-atari-lost-the-video-game-war/

 

Electronic Games' review of VCS Zaxxon is clear evidence that they were biased and didn't know what they were talking about. To call Zaxxon "the very best home video game cartridge in the land" is simply insane. Not only does it bare less resemblance to its arcade forebearer than Pac-man, it also plays considerably worse.

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Electronic Games' review of VCS Zaxxon is clear evidence that they were biased and didn't know what they were talking about. To call Zaxxon "the very best home video game cartridge in the land" is simply insane. Not only does it bare less resemblance to its arcade forebearer than Pac-man, it also plays considerably worse.

 

That quote is from a review of Colecovision Zaxxon. It says so not only right under the image of the magazine text, but in the essay text itself: "In the March 1983 issue Electronic Games called Colecovision's Zaxxon 'the very best home video game in the land.'"

 

The entire review is online here:

https://archive.org/stream/Electronic_Games_Volume_01_Number_13_1983-03_Reese_Communications_US#page/n31/mode/2up

 

The highlight for me was the E.T. review. "This game looks like it was turned out in about five weeks." Right on the nose!

Edited by KaeruYojimbo
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I keep seeing this brought up in this thread, but I thought it was common knowledge that Atari (at the time) demanded games like Pac-Man and Defender have a non-black background, because they wanted colorful games, and black was only for space games.

At the time there was a firm guideline that games which were not set in space could not use a black background.

Not that we wanted colorful games - but bright colors on black backgrounds would 'burn in' much more quickly.

And the compliant employee that i was obeyed without question.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_burn-in

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I keep seeing this brought up in this thread, but I thought it was common knowledge that Atari (at the time) demanded games like Pac-Man and Defender have a non-black background, because they wanted colorful games, and black was only for space games.

 

But even 2600 Ms Pacman didn't exactly have a black background either, but they managed to find a color scheme that wasn't completely terrible.

 

Also this alleged policy makes no sense given that they made Pacman for the 800 + 5200 with black backgrounds around the same time

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But even 2600 Ms Pacman didn't exactly have a black background either, but they managed to find a color scheme that wasn't completely terrible.

 

Also this alleged policy makes no sense given that they made Pacman for the 800 + 5200 with black backgrounds around the same time

As I understand it Atari was split up into several different divisions, each with their own marketing department, management structure, finance department, etc. It's conceivable that the Home Computer Division and the Home Video Game Division worked under a different set of rules.

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As I understand it Atari was split up into several different divisions, each with their own marketing department, management structure, finance department, etc. It's conceivable that the Home Computer Division and the Home Video Game Division worked under a different set of rules.

 

true, but I can't imagine the 5200 was in a different division from the 2600.

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Electronic Games' review of VCS Zaxxon is clear evidence that they were biased and didn't know what they were talking about. To call Zaxxon "the very best home video game cartridge in the land" is simply insane. Not only does it bare less resemblance to its arcade forebearer than Pac-man, it also plays considerably worse.

 

We being kids (at the time) could still see through crap like that. And as more and more of that type of writing became prevalent we slowly moved away from consoles and became more interested in computers. We simply knew we were being bullshitted and lost interest.

 

We knew Zaxxon for VCS sucked and no print mag was going to convince us otherwise.

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Not that we wanted colorful games - but bright colors on black backgrounds would 'burn in' much more quickly.

Ah, that makes sense.

When I was a kid, I always loved the color-change screensavers that 2600 games had, even though I knew nothing about their purpose.

 

But even 2600 Ms Pacman didn't exactly have a black background either...

Oops. I was just going from memory, yeah, it's just a very dark blue shade.

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Electronic Games' review of VCS Zaxxon is clear evidence that they were biased and didn't know what they were talking about. To call Zaxxon "the very best home video game cartridge in the land" is simply insane. Not only does it bare less resemblance to its arcade forebearer than Pac-man, it also plays considerably worse.

 

I liked EG, but will admit they often saw games through rose-tinted glasses in the Kunkel/Katz/Worley era

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In reference to something RandomTerrain said:

 

I read an essay once which suggested Atari's poor Pac-Man port hurt the public's confidence in video games, or at least Atari. The author compared reviews of games before and after Pac-Man. The reviews from before tended to defend games as if to justify them as a legitimate hobby; the reviews after tended to pick the game apart. Even if the game got good reviews the reviews seemed jaded; the reviewers had to remind everyone how bad Pacman was

 

Here it is: http://www.8bitrocket.com/2017/04/05/pac-man-electronic-games-magazine-and-the-exact-moment-atari-lost-the-video-game-war/

Good article -- thanks for the link.

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Honestly as a kid I never had a problem with Atari 2600 Pac-Man, probably because my parents never bought me an Atari, so when I got to play it at a demo station in a Sears or at a friend's house who had one it was always a treat. It wasn't until I got Pac-Man for Commodore 64 that I realized it could be better, and by that point most of my peers had gotten rid of their Ataris anyway.

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So do I.

 

Yeah, but I thought Coleco could've done a better job of translation from the arcade version to the 2600, look at what guys did with Pac-Man when they created Pac-Man 4K and Pac-Man Arcade (8K), so there is the available room for improvement on this version of Zaxxon, although this looks fun despite the butchering job Coleco did on pretty much all their 2600 releases (especially Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr., compared to the terrific Donkey Kong 2600 and Donkey Kong VCS), and in case you didn't know, they butchered the 2600 and Intellivision versions on purpose in hopes you will give in and buy a ColecoVision instead. #RESIST

 

If we can do more like we did with Pac-Man 4K, then there IS room for perhaps a Zaxxon 4K out there to

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man alive.

total call out to http://8bitworkshop.com !

this is incredibly cool!

Very cool! I added VSYNC, ldy #252, and a looping WSYNC to get a stable deep red picture to example 4. Then I added ldx #120 to be cpx by to change color background color midway the screen. I stored the color information in ROM, while keeping the color data in the accumulator. Then added bunch of nops, to change color midway of the screen by using ror to change the accuminater to get a different color. I wasted some cycles to get the color to align. Quite interesting.

 

post-24767-0-65565000-1508628473.png

 

I'm not sure if the code is editable to everyone. Really cool site and very good for someone who a visual learner.

 

post-24767-0-46307900-1508628954.png

 

I did track down the constant that hold the data for the color for the original pacman in August 2013 if the file creation is accurate. Pretty difficult to find, and pretty interesting how the game is coded and how the ghost get their color looping back 1 or 4 times depending what ghost is it drawing. The constant color data had to work with black and white mode I believe. Very interesting to look through the code and try to follow it with Stella's debugger. I do remembered changing that constant number to 64(Nintendo 64) to get the black and blue background.

Edited by Kiwi
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Yeah, but I thought Coleco could've done a better job of translation from the arcade version to the 2600, look at what guys did with Pac-Man when they created Pac-Man 4K and Pac-Man Arcade (8K), so there is the available room for improvement on this version of Zaxxon, although this looks fun despite the butchering job Coleco did on pretty much all their 2600 releases (especially Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr., compared to the terrific Donkey Kong 2600 and Donkey Kong VCS), and in case you didn't know, they butchered the 2600 and Intellivision versions on purpose in hopes you will give in and buy a ColecoVision instead. #RESIST

 

If we can do more like we did with Pac-Man 4K, then there IS room for perhaps a Zaxxon 4K out there to

 

While not quite Zaxxon, this I believe is the best someone has come to the original Zaxxon, and it's available right here on AtariAge!!!

 

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