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Pac-Man Review from 1982


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Out of the three you mentioned, maybe Sega would come in second for some of the mistakes that they made. At least Nintendo and MS still making consoles.

 

Don't forget about Sony either. They did not get off to a good start with the PS3, though I guess things turned out okay in the end,

 

Sony and Microsoft have a lot of money behind them, so if they made a mistake in their consoles they can correct it over time. Atari didn't have that luxury. Had Warners hung onto Atari despite the crash, given them a lot of money to manufacture the 7800 or another console and give it a huge promotion push before the NES could get over here, (or in another universe, distribute the NES) it might have saved the company.

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Infinitely better than what we got in 1982. And I think it would have been within the realm of possibility for the original programmers if the rules were allowed to be fudged.

 

Also, is it just me, or is the audio/video severely out of sync?

 

Oh yeah the sound is out of sync for sure.. I also think that may be an outdated version of the game as well. It's just Nukeys hack of course: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/54937-8k-atari-pac-man/

 

Play it away :)

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Marty, you've done a lot of research on Atari, given the books and the insight into the company -- I'm curious to hear from you your thoughts on why Atari kept Pac-Man at 4k and let the game be released in the format that it's in. I'm not sure if it's true that Tod asked for 8k and was denied, but it sure seems the game needed it. My theory is that Atari knew the game would be a huge seller and didn't really care, part of the attitude going on at Atari during the peak years from other things I've read and interviews and what not.

 

The project specs were set before the changeover to 8K, which was still prohibitively expensive. They were just starting to budget and plan for 8K projects (as were other console companies) during the coding. Ask anyone involved with hardware (as that's what we're really talking about here) and it's never as simple as simply stating "Let's just move it to the this other format midway through." There's budgets, parts/materials sourcing, manufacturing timelines, and all sorts of other planning that would all have to be considered and replanned. (Not to mention it was already planned for inclusion as a pack-in, so those figures were all based around that as well). It's a mass produced product, not a homebrew project where people can just decide to do a decision like that at any given time. :)

 

I think Atari was completely controlled by 1982 by the attitude of Ray Kassar and Warner Communications. There were too many people in charge that wanted a fast easy buck. Maybe some at HQ thought that video games were still a fad and wanted to make the most money out of the least cash.

 

Warners owned movie and record companies. Didn't the executives learn by then that an Movie or Album that was anxiously awaited by the public, but was a bomb, got bad reviews and left the public disappointed and felt being cheated out of their money could wind up hurting them in the long run?

It had very little if anything to do with "a fast easy buck," nor did the problems there really have to do with that. That seems to be a popular soundbyte write-off on the whole thing. Ray and Warner didn't set project/manufacturing specs and didn't directly oversee that. That was all internal. Certainly the bonuses in marketing and sales for meeting 2600 sales goals lead to an over focus on the 2600 and it's sales (and making sure nothing undercut those). But as far as features in games like Pac-Man, that usually came from the marketing group (who were the ones usually running focus tests and such).

 

 

Sony and Microsoft have a lot of money behind them, so if they made a mistake in their consoles they can correct it over time. Atari didn't have that luxury. Had Warners hung onto Atari despite the crash, given them a lot of money to manufacture the 7800 or another console and give it a huge promotion push before the NES could get over here, (or in another universe, distribute the NES) it might have saved the company.

Atari had a lot of money, plenty to promote and manufacture any console they wanted. That was never an issue. Nor was the company just consoles, consumer was just one of the divisions. And Warner did save the company, they jettisoned the underperforming Consumer Division and kept the rest. Remember, Atari started as a coin company and got into consumer as a side project. Many of the employees still considered it a coin company at heart, and that original portion of the company continued on for almost another 20 years. The company that Tramiel started was Atari Corp., a completely different company based on the purchase of the Consumer Division assets which were folded under his company (TTL and then TTL was renamed Atari Corp). The rest of Atari Inc. was immediately renamed to Atari Games Inc., then paired down to just the profitable Coin Division which had majority ownership sold to NAMCO in '85 and was renamed Atari Games Corp.

 

(Also, I'm not sure where you're picking up that extra s, but it's just Warner not Warners :) )

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It wasn't done ASAP, he had the normal dev time. He couldn't do anything more graphics wise given the system's limitations vs. the project specs (it needing to be a 2-player game with only a 4K ROM). Likewise the ghosts flickered on purpose.

 

Sorry, but I don't believe the explanation that the ghosts "flickered on purpose".

 

He was working on an arcade conversion, the intent of which is first and foremost to approximate the arcade game as closely as possible. By definition, you are supposed to adhere to the source material. Generally speaking, you don't take personal liberties with arcade conversions (especially ones licensed from another company). If the programmer thought four flickering yellow ghosts made those characters look more "ghostly", then why stop there? Why not have five ghosts, then, in order to (ahem) "augment the challenge for master Pac-Man players"? Why didn't the programmers of the home versions of Donkey Kong change Mario into a chiseled bodybuilder, and Pauline into a swimsuit model?

 

I'm sure you could point to the wild play styles offered by 112 variations of Space Invaders or 66 variations of Asteroids. I'd also point out that those conversions largely retained the fundamentals of the original game, before tacking on optional enhancements.

 

I could accept the argument that the ghosts flickered because of hardware limitations. After all, they flickered on 2600 Ms. Pac-Man, and they flickered on 2600 Jr. Pac-Man too. Flicker was present in so many other fast-action 2600 games of the era. There's no shame in that reasoning.

 

The notion of the flicker being an intentional design decision (due to personal liberty of one man) is actually rather insulting. I can't imagine the brass at Namco would have knowingly approved of that.

 

I'm inclined to agree with others here that this was a revisionist cover story, so as not to be forced into a position where he would have to explain that he lacked either the time or the talent to make the visuals look better. I tell you what, though. If it really was an intentional decision, then it sure was a dumb one!

 

One final thought...if the flicker was truly intentional, then he ultimately failed at that, too. Notice that during moments when the four ghost sprites are superimposed on each other (most obvious in the ghost pen at the beginning of a level), there is no flicker whatsoever. Your honor, I believe the case is closed!

 

As far as the 4K limitation goes, I think SoulBlazer summed it up well:

 

Agreed on all of that, but even giving Todd that, I still have the same issues that I raised earlier -- Atari really blew it by not allowing 8k of space to work with and allowing Todd the time and tools and memory to make Pac-Man closer to the arcade game. It really seems like Atari knew the game would sell like hotcakes and didn't get a damn about what it looked like. We all knew even as kids the 2600 didn't have perfect arcade ports, but most of them were good efforts. This one was SO far removed from the arcade game it's not even funny. It's this kind of hubris that started to show serious problems at Atari.

 

I agree with this. Pac-Man was the hottest arcade game of the day. Considering that Atari secured the exclusive home rights, you'd think they'd have pulled out all of the stops to make this one truly shine. They already had other 8K games prior to this...management only allotting 4K for this one is practically relegating it to a B-tier project.

 

Like you said, it's possible that management would figure that the game would sell on name alone. After all, Atari had the rights tied up...it wasn't like Intellivision, Odyssey 2, or Astrocade were coming out with their own version of Pac-Man.

 

Someone earlier in this thread suggested that they Atari have deliberately held back the effort put into the 2600 game, so that they could turn around and offer a better (read: much better, to the point where it was obvious from even a fleeting glance at the graphics) version for their computers and/or the upcoming 5200 system. That way, they could entice you to buy new hardware, in order to obtain the "arcade quality" Pac-Man game you've been craving. I think this is a possibility, especially considering that Atari actually ran a commercial (after the 2600 adapter for ColecoVision was released) promoting the 2600 version Pac-Man as "Pac-Man on ColecoVision" before showing the 5200 version for comparison.

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Pac-Man was Todd Frye's second video game at Atari. He had not done a very good job on his first video game so he was on probation when he developed Pac-Man. He had a variable flicker kernel working when his supervisor mentioned to him that it was an interesting approach since it had never been tried before. Todd, not wanting to get fired, then started over using a kernel with straight flicker. So if you want someone to blame for Pac-Man's flicker, blame Dennis Koble Todd's supervisor.

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Sorry, but I don't believe the explanation that the ghosts "flickered on purpose".

 

He was working on an arcade conversion, the intent of which is first and foremost to approximate the arcade game as closely as possible. By definition, you are supposed to adhere to the source material. Generally speaking, you don't take personal liberties with arcade conversions (especially ones licensed from another company).

Sorry, but that's speaking from either a complete naïveté of the process at that time or at the very least in hindsight of what was expected of conversions later in gaming history. "Personal liberties" were taken all the time in arcade conversions of that period in order to tailor a game for that specific platform. Whether it was color changes, gameplay tweaks, sprite approximations, etc. Arcade accurate conversions were simply not the norm at that time, especially in an era when arcade games had rapidly moved to bitmapped games. As the group of former 2600 programmers we interviewed together in front of their old building explained, they were being asked to convert these bitmapped based titles to non-bitmapped hardware - and they were the first to do so. *ALL* expressed admiration for Tod's skills and what he was able to accomplish.

 

If the programmer thought four flickering yellow ghosts made those characters look more "ghostly", then why stop there? Why not have five ghosts, then, in order to (ahem) "augment the challenge for master Pac-Man players"?

If he barely had resources enough to do the project as it was, how would he have the resources to add even more content? That's just silly and completely ignoring what was already stated.

 

Why didn't the programmers of the home versions of Donkey Kong change Mario into a chiseled bodybuilder, and Pauline into a swimsuit model?

How does changing main characters into completely different characters related to making ghosts flicker or not? (And as was already established, NAMCO and Midway were already referring to them as ghosts as was the game's creator). Again, not an apt comparison.

 

 

I could accept the argument that the ghosts flickered because of hardware limitations. After all, they flickered on 2600 Ms. Pac-Man, and they flickered on 2600 Jr. Pac-Man too. Flicker was present in so many other fast-action 2600 games of the era. There's no shame in that reasoning.

 

 

Yes, because claiming a mass adoption of "revisionist history" among Tod and all the other programmers there makes more sense. :roll:

 

The notion of the flicker being an intentional design decision (due to personal liberty of one man) is actually rather insulting.

Not anymore insulting than what you just suggested, lol.

 

I can't imagine the brass at Namco would have knowingly approved of that.

Knowingly approved of what? You're once again laying on a level of power and oversight that just didn't exist at that time. NAMCO then wasn't the NAMCO now or even the NAMCO of several years later, most of these Japanese companies were just happy to be selling a licensed version onto what was then the platform to be on, especially in 1980 when the game was licensed. Taito for instance dislikes the 2600 version of Space Invaders, which was wildly popular then. That's why they had AtGames substitute a newer version for the original 2600 one on the recent Flashbacks.

 

As far as the 4K limitation goes, I think SoulBlazer summed it up well:

 

Then your definition of "well" is way off. What he stated was already explained away three posts up. There was nothing "b-tier" about the use of 4K at the time and they did not have 8K games prior to the starting of Pac-Man. People are confusing Asteroids hitting the market first with which was actually started and coded before the other. Pac-Man was started before Asteroids and the later 8K games, which is why the anti-flicker routine of Tod's was borrowed for it. It was specced and started when 4K was still the norm before it became feasible to work with more expensive 8K ROMs. Tod took the full dev time because he was on probation and did not cut any corners and was not under any pressure to rush and get it done. It was turned in during early Fall '81 and went into manufacturing, and wasn't distributed until early March '82 in preparation for a co-ordinated National Pac-Man day on April 1st (the first attempt at a co-ordinated release date for a console game). These are all facts. People are welcome to their own opinions as to whether they think Tod could have done better. Opinions however do not trump facts and should not be presented as such.

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Someone earlier in this thread suggested that they Atari have deliberately held back the effort put into the 2600 game, so that they could turn around and offer a better (read: much better, to the point where it was obvious from even a fleeting glance at the graphics) version for their computers and/or the upcoming 5200 system. That way, they could entice you to buy new hardware, in order to obtain the "arcade quality" Pac-Man game you've been craving.

This theory is often presented for Donkey Kong. In actuality, a lost sale on one platform does not guarantee a sale for another...and NOBODY was putting such constraints on the programmer in either example. They developed what they did using the time and resources they had. If the end result was seen fit for distribution, it went into production. Simple as that.

 

Everyone:

BTW Frye already confirmed that the color scheme chosen was his own (because he thought that the arcade version's was uninteresting). No need to keep arguing about what the suits at Atari supposedly "required"...the blue background was his own choice.

And the flicker debate doesn't really lead anywhere either. At the time, flickering objects was not seen as such a problem. Some very successful games (such as Adventure and Defender) flicker even worse.

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Sidenote: it's funny that we have all these newer 4k games to showcase "what could have been", yet nobody picks up on the aspect that WAS required - it has to include a 2-player option within that 4k limit (Frye's game stands alone in that regard). If it boils down to a lack of ram to keep 2 dot patterns in memory, one could cheat a little and switch players as each board is completed ;)

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Sorry, but that's speaking from either a complete naïveté of the process at that time or at the very least in hindsight of what was expected of conversions later in gaming history. "Personal liberties" were taken all the time in arcade conversions of that period in order to tailor a game for that specific platform. Whether it was color changes, gameplay tweaks, sprite approximations, etc. Arcade accurate conversions were simply not the norm at that time, especially in an era when arcade games had rapidly moved to bitmapped games.

 

 

What was "expected" of conversions? Atari laid out the expectation front and center with their own marketing and advertising!

 

2600 Pac-Man was promoted heavily as "the home version of the arcade game". I remember seeing a pre-release commercial showing the arcade game being played, with the narrator saying, "The home version is coming soon". Virtually all advertising made references to the arcade game.

 

I realize liberties were taken for a wide variety of reasons (which is why I referenced Space Invaders and Asteroids). Sometimes the changes were done to cover for technical limitations. Other times they were done to add variety and value. 2600 games couldn't perfectly replicate arcade games. While they were deficient in some areas, the addition of new content would make up for that, by offering twists and challenges not found in the original arcade piece.

 

In light of the heavy marketing references to the arcade version, I am surprised that Tod Frye made so many sweeping changes to the look and feel of the game. You'd think there would be more pressure on him to adhere more closely to the fundamentals first and foremost, after which he could apply his personal stamp later with added gameplay varieties. But even such simple things as the color scheme were wrong. Did they think no one would notice? If he liked those colors, then why not offer the alternate color palette as a gameplay variation for those who desired a new twist, while simultaneously allowing others to play using the original colors for a more "authentic" experience? I think the choice would have been better accepted by consumers, compared to one programmer's lone decision to force his own singular perference.

 

Atari didn't present this as "one artist's unique reinterpretation of the fabled Pac-Man mythos". They presented it as "the arcade game at home", plain and simple.

 

Whether all of the visual, audio, and gameplay alterations were deliberate or not are debatable, but the majority of those changes were not well received by the public. Mr. Frye's coding skills might have been top-notch among his peers, but his sense of artistry certainly comes into question. After all, the other in-house programmers evidently adored the new tweaks so much that they conveniently forgot to incorporate them into the subsequent 400/800 and 5200 versions!

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After all, the other in-house programmers evidently adored the new tweaks so much that they conveniently forgot to incorporate them into the subsequent 400/800 and 5200 versions!

The Atari computer version was released before the Atari 2600 version. We played it at Woolco department store. That's where my family got the idea that the VCS version might have a similar look.

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Another interesting thing about the supervisor Denis Koble is that a short time later he quit Atari, started Imagic, programmed Atlantis, and made millions of dollars. Perhaps his mind was not focused very well at Atari and he let Pac-Man slip through without really knowing or caring how bad it really was.

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The Atari computer version was released before the Atari 2600 version. We played it at Woolco department store. That's where my family got the idea that the VCS version might have a similar look.

 

Really? I never knew that. I hadn't seen the Atari 8-bit computer version in stores until about a month or two after the 2600 game came out. That said, I was only 10 years old at the time, and didn't own anything other than the 2600, so I wouldn't have paid particularly close attention to the release dates of Atari computer games.

 

Nonetheless, my point remains. It would've been in development simultaneously with the 2600 game, anyway (especially if it Pac-Man was started before Asteroids, as Marty indicated). If Tod Frye's numerous alterations were approved of and celebrated by his peers as "artistic license", then why weren't any of those alterations implemented into other versions of the game? Were they not permitted to exercise a similarly higher level of creative control?

 

The 400/800 and 5200 versions were remarkable in how closely they adhered to the arcade game, even compared to other arcade conversions on those platforms at the time. Did the programmers consciously choose arcade accuracy in reverence to the purity of the original game design, or did management force them to stick strictly to the source without any "artistic" deviations?

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How about an example going the other way around? 2600 Space Invaders vs. 8-bit/5200 Space Invaders...proof positive that the programmers basically did what they wanted back then. 2600 coders might have had a bit more freedom regardless, since it lacked the graphical capability compared to most arcades.

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This theory is often presented for Donkey Kong. In actuality, a lost sale on one platform does not guarantee a sale for another...and NOBODY was putting such constraints on the programmer in either example. They developed what they did using the time and resources they had. If the end result was seen fit for distribution, it went into production. Simple as that.

 

Everyone:

BTW Frye already confirmed that the color scheme chosen was his own (because he thought that the arcade version's was uninteresting). No need to keep arguing about what the suits at Atari supposedly "required"...the blue background was his own choice.

And the flicker debate doesn't really lead anywhere either. At the time, flickering objects was not seen as such a problem. Some very successful games (such as Adventure and Defender) flicker even worse.

Excellent point Nukey! Wizards of Wor has even more flicker but it's an awesome game, the two player mode in particular.

 

Agree Frye was doing extra flicker on purpose since the ghosts appear to have more than 3 frames between them; could be wrong, I don't use the debugger but it looks like more than 3 :)

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Agree Frye was doing extra flicker on purpose since the ghosts appear to have more than 3 frames between them; could be wrong, I don't use the debugger but it looks like more than 3 :)

 

I disagree. As noted earlier, when the ghosts are all superimposed on each other, there is no flicker.

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How about an example going the other way around? 2600 Space Invaders vs. 8-bit/5200 Space Invaders...proof positive that the programmers basically did what they wanted back then. 2600 coders might have had a bit more freedom regardless, since it lacked the graphical capability compared to most arcades.

 

Good example. I get the feeling the Japanese game companies at that time didn't care what the console versions looked like as long as they got paid. Then again I remember that Namco's executives were furious when Midway developed and released Ms. Pac Man without their permission.

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To throw more fuel onto the fire...here's what I believe Tod Frye was doing.

 

He was alternately displaying the ghost sprites one at a time, over a cycle of 4 frames.

 

Frame 1: Ghost 1 on, ghost 2 off, ghost 3 off, ghost 4 off.

Frame 2: Ghost 1 off, ghost 2 on, ghost 3 off, ghost 4 off.

Frame 3: Ghost 1 off, ghost 2 off, ghost 3 on, ghost 4 off.

Frame 4: Ghost 1 off, ghost 2 off, ghost 3 off, ghost 4 on.

Frame 5: Ghost 1 on, ghost 2 off, ghost 3 off, ghost 4 off.

Frame 6: Ghost 1 off, ghost 2 on, ghost 3 off, ghost 4 off.

 

There's no "added" flicker. The Pac-Man game engine is only capable of displaying one single ghost at any given instance. Each ghost is on 25% of the time, and off 75% of the time.

 

This practically screams "hardware limitation" to me.

 

It's possible that a workaround (to display more ghosts at once per frame) could have been developed through better or more efficient coding. Either he didn't have time in the development schedule to come up with a better solution and the game was rushed into manufacturing, or he just took the lazy way out, figured "it's good enough...I'll get my million dollar check regardless of the outcome", and called it a day. But I highly doubt that there was some point in development where he actually had all four ghosts displayed steadily with no flicker on every single frame, and later deliberately chose (out of artistic liberty) to turn off the sprites for 75% of the time.

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I think you can make an argument that there was a time when ports were simply an homage to a proven game idea. Space Invaders and Asteroids are from this period. The typical customer was probably only superficially familiar with the original and a similar game was good enough. Pac-Man is probably one first games to fall solidly on the other side of the line. Everyone knew the game. It was everywhere. People were hooked en masse. They knew the sights and sounds. They were memorizing patterns. It was a phenomenon. "Programmers can do whatever they want" was bad policy by this time. Arcades were popping up everywhere and strong arcade ports would become the ultimate marketing tool.

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The project specs were set before the changeover to 8K, which was still prohibitively expensive. They were just starting to budget and plan for 8K projects (as were other console companies) during the coding. Ask anyone involved with hardware (as that's what we're really talking about here) and it's never as simple as simply stating "Let's just move it to the this other format midway through." There's budgets, parts/materials sourcing, manufacturing timelines, and all sorts of other planning that would all have to be considered and replanned. (Not to mention it was already planned for inclusion as a pack-in, so those figures were all based around that as well). It's a mass produced product, not a homebrew project where people can just decide to do a decision like that at any given time. :)

 

So basically what you're saying -- and what this all boils down to -- is that based on the evidence and supporting information that you've uncovered and what we know about Atari and the people there at that time frame, that Tod did the best job possible on the game with the resources that he had available to him and that Atari fully supported him in all efforts in porting the game over.

 

I do agree with that, and I get what you're saying, but it still leaves a bitter taste in ones mouth when I think about how disappointing the 2600 version of the game was compared to the arcade game, indeed, to ALL the other Atari arcade ports were made. Was Pac-Man and Space Invaders the only ones to use 4k?

 

I just can't help but wonder if anything else could have been done, given the time frame the game was made and the resources and demands put on the project, to make the game more like the arcade version. Another programmer, perhaps? I'm sure Tod was very talented but he has a, well, checkered history of making 2600 games. Would another programmer had demanded more resources from Atari to get a better version of the game done, like the guy who did Burgertime for the 2600 did from Mattel? (Sorry, his name escapes me right now).

 

It's very possible that the answer may just boil down to 'this programmer did the best he could'. But clearly Atari didn't anticipate the backlash that the game would cause. It sold millions of copies due to how popular the arcade game was, then people found out how craptasitc it was and gave the port it's rep that it has kept ever since. It also put the serious crack into Atari's reputation and status as a company and video game maker, which would be wedged wider open more with E.T.

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Was Pac-Man and Space Invaders the only ones to use 4k?

 

 

Limiting it to pre Pac-Man arcade titles (since the switchover to 8K occurred during) :

 

Air-Sea Battle (Anti-Aircraft) both 2K and 4K.

Basketball - 2K

Baseball - 2K

Berzerk - 4K (pretty sure this was the last 4K arcade title)

Canyon Bomber - 2K

Combat (Tank) - 2K

Circus Atari - 2K

Defender - 4K (completed shortly after Tod turned in Pac-Man in early September '81, but started before Pac-Man)

Human Cannonball (Cannonball) - 2K

Indy 500 - 2K

Missile Command - 4K

Night Driver - 2K

Sky Diver - 2K

Space Invaders - 4K

Steeplechase - 2K

Video Olympics (PONG, etc.) - 2K

 

As you can see, most of the previous coin titles were based on what were referred to in Atari's Coin Division as "stamp" games, what we more commonly refer to as "sprites" and what the 2600 was actually designed to play. Very simple playfield graphics with more detailed foreground sprites (simple bitmapped player/missile stamps) moving around on top of it. The coin games they were being asked to port in '81-'82 represented a newer generation in coin games where the entire screen was typically a large bitmap, which included far more detailed individual background and sprite elements as well. Something which they all told us was a big challenge for them on the 2600s architecture (considering they were pioneering that). For example as Tod mentioned to us:

 

“We were still new at doing advanced arcade ports to the VCS - there was Space Invaders and Asteroids - both of those used their own color schemes, and Asteroids looked and played different from the arcade. I wanted to add more color to the maze instead of black and blue, so I chose the colors. The maze was also very difficult to implement, so the exits were placed on the tops and bottoms instead of the sides. My primary focus was on the game play and making sure the game mechanics of the arcade were in the VCS title as close as could be done."

 

 

Trying to get better graphics and more gameplay on there costs more system resources. Even with the move to 8K (which occurred during Pac-Man's authoring) they still had to do a lot of pioneering work in regards to resources vs. game. As Howard said in an interview some time ago:

 

"The one thing I didn’t want was hi-rez graphics. With the 2600, you always had a choice to go either with 1-line or 2-line graphics resolution, and by choosing 2-line rez I sacrificed better graphics for the game’s overall size. I always felt that using 1-line rez or bit-mapped graphics to get a pretty picture was a waste of memory, so I looked for ways of tweaking the machine to get graphics. There were a lot of techniques I introduced with Raiders. There’s a well-known company memo of mine explaining how to use the ball register as an animation, as opposed to a dot. The Tsetse flies are one example. This frees up the player registers for more animation; the branch is actually a player register used in a strange way."

 

4K had just become the standard size in '80-'81, and Carl Nielson was busy working on the 8K cartridge design in '81. So again, it's not like they had the 8K cart format sitting around and decided to withhold it on a whim (or because of cheapness as some have claimed). Pac-Man and those early games simply were specced during the the 4K standard, and the possibility for 8K didn't occur until those games were already almost completed. Asteroids was the first for 8K simply because Brad Stewart (who was also Tod's manager) could not get the game size down to fit in 4K (both he and Bob Smith tried), so it was moved to take advantage of the brand new 8K bank switching technology. (Brad was also who borrowed Tod's anti-flicker routine for Asteroids).

Edited by Retro Rogue
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Regarding the ghosts / monsters debate, there is some relevant information to the discussion in this article:

 

"Pac-Man: When Monsters Became Ghosts"

 

http://www.2600connection.com/articles/pac-man_monsters_ghosts/pac-man_monsters_ghosts.html

 

Ah yes, psycho Scott and his usual screwy logic, false claims about others and thinly veiled attacks. It's funny how even being banned from here he's managing to show up, and I'm surprised he could take time off from his cyberstalking schedule to write anything even if it's more of the same (all he's doing is re-presenting everything already discussed here on AA and framed with ridiculous claims about myself and others).

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@SQL

Wizard of Wor doesn't apply to the point I was making...it wasn't an Atari-made port...the gist was that flicker was a well-used technique that didn't really apply to whether a game would be a success or not.

 

To throw more fuel onto the fire...here's what I believe Tod Frye was doing.

 

He was alternately displaying the ghost sprites one at a time, over a cycle of 4 frames.

No "belief" required here...that is a fact of what the kernel is doing. You can frame-step in Stella for proof even if you can't read asm.

 

 

It's possible that a workaround (to display more ghosts at once per frame) could have been developed through better or more efficient coding. Either he didn't have time in the development schedule to come up with a better solution and the game was rushed into manufacturing, or he just took the lazy way out, figured "it's good enough...I'll get my million dollar check regardless of the outcome", and called it a day. But I highly doubt that there was some point in development where he actually had all four ghosts displayed steadily with no flicker on every single frame, and later deliberately chose (out of artistic liberty) to turn off the sprites for 75% of the time.

The variable-flicker technique he was supposedly working on covers that. But it's irrelevant for the sake of this argument because 8k was not an option anyway. A different approach would be to flicker everything @ 20hz (ala PacMan4k)...so his "choice" (if there was one) could be in regards to that. Such a choice would have been made pre-development, tho...because there is no evidence in the program that it was ever doing anything aside from the 15hz ghosts it ended up with. Shame, as this method does not use much more program space to accomplish.

 

Of course...if you're looking for no flicker at all, the game would have had to be something similar to Lock'N'Chase...using the other single-bit sprites for characters, or limiting them to where they can roam (introducing more compromises and limitations to gameplay).

 

@Retro:

Most of the examples you listed are not official ports of any game (even Combat and Circus Atari are not ports...the name is different from the arcade game it was inspired by). Breakout is a notable exception, tho...with the home version existing before it was coded for arcades.

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