I can definitely see what you’re saying, as I fall into the category of being a bit too young to have experienced the golden age of arcade games while they were still drawing lineups.
I’ll never forget a fateful day In 1982 when I was 4-5 years old, my mom brought my brother and I over to her friends’ house, and they had just bought an Atari for their son. We played Pac-Man and Space Invaders that day, which were the very first videogames I ever touched (or saw) in my life. My brother and I still laugh about how on Pac-Man I kept making the same move from the home position – left then up – and getting killed by the same ghost over and over again, scoring a whopping 6 points or so in the first videogame of my life.
We got our own Atari the following year, with Pac-Man being our first game aside from Combat.
Atari 2600 Pac-Man stood as my whole “concept” of what Pac-Man was for the next two decades—dumb terminology and all (vitamins, power pills, etc.). I think I might have briefly played ports on later systems that did a much better job, but in those days I didn’t care enough about Pac-Man to even pay attention.
I didn’t even realize it until I discovered MAME and tried Pac-Man in that format, but I had never played the arcade version of Pac-Man until after the year 2000. Now the original Pac-Man on MAME is one of my go-to games—especially when guests come over—and I can really appreciate its brilliance even though I missed it growing up. If the bar was set there, I can totally understand how the 2600 version would be a complete letdown.
I finally got around to buying an Atari 2600 last year after a 23 year hiatus, and I did make a point of hunting down a copy of Pac-Man, but I don’t think I’ve played it once.
i have to say my story is pretty much the exact same. I was born in 76 and didnt play til 82. I didnt play pac-man again until mame in 2000. Now i am obsessed. Have a pac-man tattoo. Custom nike pac-man shoes, arcade machine, about 20 pac-man shirts, and other stuff i collect. Pac-man back in the day was crappy but still loved it. Did people complain about the pac-man handheld? That is awful. I still love it and we played the hell out of crappy handhelds and never complained about the atari and nes versions being better. My first games i ever played were baseball and football on handheld in the 70's. Those are really awful but we loved playing them. Even as i kid i understood that the atari was limited but didnt care.