In defense of Pac-Man...

[Asaki]

On the 2600, I played Ms. Pac-Man before I played Pac-Man, so I was quite a bit disappointed that the maze was all wrong.

 

I never minded the colors, or Pac-Man's eye, and as others have mentioned, those sound effects and music are so iconic today. If just the maze could be fixed, IMO, that would put it on par with a lot of other 2600 ports.

 

I'm tempted to try hacking one of the Ms. Pac-Man -> Pac-Man hacks.

 

 

Maybe a little something like this @_@

Edited October 17, 2017 by Asaki

[Nukey Shay]

Attached is the latest I had though still not done.

 

Nice! Looks to be virtually complete.

[Tod frye]

HI Tod. Why did you assemble,and not just use the original Rom? Your Pac version was disappointing BITD, but we've read about the restrictions you were under, so it's all good. Many of us played it endlessly!

i use the disassembly because i am more interested in coding for the 2600 than i am in playing the games :smiley faced emoticon:

Edited October 17, 2017 by Tod frye

[bradhig1]

I heard that Tod developed an anti flicker routine for the ghosts but Atari wouldn't let him use it.

[pacman000]

On the 2600, I played Ms. Pac-Man before I played Pac-Man, so I was quite a bit disappointed that the maze was all wrong.

 

I never minded the colors, or Pac-Man's eye, and as others have mentioned, those sound effects and music are so iconic today. If just the maze could be fixed, IMO, that would put it on par with a lot of other 2600 ports.

 

I'm tempted to try hacking one of the Ms. Pac-Man -> Pac-Man hacks.

 

pacmock.png

 

Maybe a little something like this @_@

I might even consider the eye an improvement; all the art for Pac-Man showed him with an eye. Why shouldn't the game's sprite have an eye?

[bradhig1]

I remember this commerical..

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P0BA7ae-Xk

 

 

 

Here is a UK commerical. I think a lot of people here have been in a situation like this.

 

[+Cafeman]

i use the disassembly because i am more interested in coding for the 2600 than i am in playing the games :smiley faced emoticon:

 

Kudos. Code something for us !

 

(_)3

[tschak909]

well. what an odd feeling.

just got my dasm and stella.

and assembled Pac-man for the first time in over 36 years.

 

Some sort of time-warp.

Mind boggling.

 

Isn't it great that the assembly literally takes a split second?

 

-Thom

[high voltage]

I remember this commerical..

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P0BA7ae-Xk

 

 

 

Here is a UK commerical. I think a lot of people here have been in a situation like this.

 

 

Nice both commercials. Still love the game nowadays.

[Tickled_Pink]

It's weird how people remember the bad things more than the good. IMO both Pac-Man and ET have received unfairly bad press over the years. BITD I played the hell out of Pac-Man, even though it was a borrowed copy. I sucked massively at arcade Pac-Man (still do) but 2600 Pac-Man was much more accessible and I got to the point where I could continue almost indefinitely. I also had much lower expectations than others, it seems. Even back then I was aware of the limitations of the system so I wasn't remotely disappointed by how it turned out.

 

Of course, now I know how much more could have been done (Ms Pac-Man as one example) but at the time I was more than happy with it. In hindsight, though, it looks as though Atari's management were overconfident in their ability to sell anything to their user base.

[Tempest]

It's weird how people remember the bad things more than the good.

 

I don't remember it being bad per se, just different. Even though I had the 8-bit version I played the 2600 when I wanted some variety. It might not have looked like the arcade version, but few 2600 games did. It played well enough and that was what I cared about back then.

[Bryan]

It's weird how people remember the bad things more than the good.

 

Well, the bad was that Atari killed the golden goose and had to unload the company in a fire sale, and you have to look at the missteps leading up to that.

 

Pac-Man is a decent 2600 game. It's hard to imagine doing a faithful port in 4K and 4 months with tools from '82. The problem has to do with Atari building up certain expectations with borderline false advertising and then delivering something quite different.

[zzip]

 

Well, the bad was that Atari killed the golden goose and had to unload the company in a fire sale, and you have to look at the missteps leading up to that.

 

Pac-Man is a decent 2600 game. It's hard to imagine doing a faithful port in 4K and 4 months with tools from '82. The problem has to do with Atari building up certain expectations with borderline false advertising and then delivering something quite different.

 

I don't see how the problem that plague pac-man was a tool problem

 

Here are some simple fixes that wouldn't require a new set of tool: Fix the colors, make pacman sprite actually look like pacman (meaning rounder. not diamond shaped and without eye.) Those two things alone would help greatly without requiring more RAM or huge time investment. I can't see how these two steps are more than a days work, even if you lack the tools and have to draw the pacman sprite on graph paper and convert them to hex (Which I how I designed the P/M's for my 8-bit games)

 

A little more involved: give pacman up and down animation, and make the music and sounds more true to the arcade. These would probably require a little more RAM, but the end result would be a port that was better received. Other games of the era kept the arcade music, so there's no tool problem there.

 

And final steps: if you can't clone the arcade maze, at least make it more interesting that the current one (see 2600 MS Pacman). Including left/right tunnel.. Although I think the up/down tunnel might be more forgivable if the rest of the game was more faithful.

Edited October 18, 2017 by zzip

[Bryan]

Oh yeah, it could have been a lot better. I'm just saying that something on par with Ms Pac-Man would have required an 8K cart and more time. That blame rests with Atari management who was developing a habit of sabotaging their biggest releases.

[Asaki]

Here are some simple fixes that wouldn't require a new set of tool: Fix the colors...

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.

Edited October 18, 2017 by Asaki

[Video]

Think part of the reason I still regularly play 2600 pacman is that it is so different from the arcade. I mean, I can get (well already have actually) pacman much more faithful to the arcade, even arcade perfect on a wide array of systems. But I rarely play them.

 

Like i said, pacman fever, behuches. The first pacman I had was basic on one of our computers, VCS at least had graphics, lol. Neither were remotely arcade perfect. But I had pacman and like many, played the ever loving shit out of it. It did take till the mid 90's, but with (your game here) fever, often comes (your game here) burnout.

 

But I still come back to VCS, probably would play that old basic one too if I knew where it was.

 

I find it incredibly hard to believe that NO ONE back then ever saw a commercial, an add, a box, or a friends copy, AND were truly delusional that the VCS could do arcade perfect with previous games experience. All I knew was I wanted it, and its inaccuracies didn't matter at all to me.

[+Random Terrain]

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.

Some people claim that is a myth. Maybe it's not a myth because we all know that Berzerk had a blue background and nobody complained about that:

 

 

 

 

 

I find it incredibly hard to believe that NO ONE back then ever saw a commercial, an add, a box, or a friends copy, AND were truly delusional that the VCS could do arcade perfect with previous games experience. All I knew was I wanted it, and its inaccuracies didn't matter at all to me.

My family preordered the game before we saw any commercials, before there were any boxes to see and before anyone had a cartridge to borrow. We didn't think it would be arcade-perfect, but we thought it would resemble the arcade game. Space Invaders had a similar look and feel. Missile Command felt enough like arcade Missile Command that there wasn't much to complain about. The asteroids in Asteroids were colorful, so that was different from the arcade version, but the gameplay was close enough.

[+save2600]

some other early non-space games with black backgrounds, and I'm sure there's a few more:

 

Basketball

Breakout (Super Breakout apparently takes place in outer space - lol)

Dodge 'Em

Missile Command

Night Driver

Pengo

Taz

[+KaeruYojimbo]

some other early non-space games with black backgrounds, and I'm sure there's a few more:

 

Night Driver

 

Well, you can't exactly call a game Night Driver and give it a bright blue background, can you?

[Asaki]

Maybe it's not a myth because we all know that Berzerk had a blue background and nobody complained about that:

Same copyright date as Ms. Pac-Man, so maybe that was around the time they started to reconsider.

[pacman000]

some other early non-space games with black backgrounds, and I'm sure there's a few more:

 

Basketball

Breakout (Super Breakout apparently takes place in outer space - lol)

Dodge 'Em

Missile Command

Night Driver

Pengo

Taz

In later levels Missile Command has colored backgrounds. Besides, I always thought the cities you were defending were space colonies.

[Flojomojo]

Well, you can't exactly call a game Night Driver and give it a bright blue background, can you?

 

It always bugged me just a little bit that in order to see the inky black of space in Star Raiders, you needed to turn off your shields.

[Tempest]

 

It always bugged me just a little bit that in order to see the inky black of space in Star Raiders, you needed to turn off your shields.

I think there's a hack for that somewhere.

[G-type]

some other early non-space games with black backgrounds, and I'm sure there's a few more:

 

Basketball

Breakout (Super Breakout apparently takes place in outer space - lol)

Dodge 'Em

Missile Command

Night Driver

Pengo

Taz

 

Pengo and Taz were later releases

[Flojomojo]

I think there's a hack for that somewhere.

 

Looks like it was for the 8-bit version. That's fine, I'm quite unlikely to play it anyway, I need a lot more QOL in my video games now that I'm in my dotage.