A Very Weird and Blocky Future

[panamajoe]

one of the funniest pieces i´ve read so far on classic gaming:

 

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/con...ocky_future.php

 

 

e.g.: on PacMan (Atari 2600):

 

[...] In 1982, other, more powerful gaming systems were already overshadowing the Atari 2600, like Intellivision (with its sizzling hot teen-icon spokesperson, George Plimpton) and ColecoVision. But it didn't matter because I had something those other systems didn't: Pac-Man. So great was my love for Pac-Man, I was willing to overlook the very obvious fact that Atari had taken an already simplistic video game and managed to degrade it in so many ways the game felt like a tremendous prank masterminded by a disgruntled Russian computer programmer. The escape tunnels were reoriented on the top and bottom of the screen. The dots were turned into dashes (!), and some of those dashes were so long they had to be eaten in two gulps (!!). The music was stripped out entirely, replaced with a four-note emergency signal. But most disorienting of all was the hero: Pac-Man had been re-imagined as an octagon with a constantly chomping, greedy slot for a mouth, and designed so large he could scarcely squeeze through the maze. Because of Pac-Man's macrocephalic condition, he was incapable of rounding corners, but Atari found a brilliant workaround: Pac-Man would always face west. When pushing the joystick to the right, Pac-Man simply backed into dots and energy blocks, his mouth still opening and closing rhythmically, as if crying in pain from shoving things into his rectum. Underscoring Atari Pac-Man's overall cognitive disorder, the home game replaced the familiar rhythmic dot-munching soundtrack with a flat, repeating "bonk" note—its own digital Tourrette's bark. [...]

 

[Atari Punk 78]

Good find and it's all true.

[Gregory DG]

Too bad he didn't get to play his 5200.

[A.J. Franzman]

Written by an Australian, perhaps? My Pac-Man always faces screen-right, which I would be more likely to call "east" than "west". Also, I find it odd that he makes no mention of Pac-Man gaining an eye.

[SeaGtGruff]

2600 Pac-Man always faces in one direction? Huh, is this supposed to be a joke?

 

Michael

[A.J. Franzman]

Or maybe it's just faulty memories.

[SeaGtGruff]

Or maybe it's just faulty memories.

Maybe. Could be getting the ghosts mixed up with Pac-Man? I mean, the ghosts's eyes just roll around clockwise in all four directions in an endless cycle, rather than looking in the direction the ghosts are headed in. I'm not familiar enough with arcade Pac-Man to know if that's also true in it. But Pac-Man faces left or right-- simple enough to do on the 2600 using the REFPx registers. On the other hand, Pac-Man never faces up or down, maybe that's what he's talking about? Does Pac-Man face up and down in the arcade game?

 

Michael

[Nukey Shay]

Does Pac-Man face up and down in the arcade game?

 

Yes. BTW I never heard it mentioned before that 2600 Pac only faces 1 direction...but this could happen if the reflect register is not holding it's state for some reason. Maybe it was a hack of the game?

 

IMO it's more likely the fact of only having 2 directions coupled with a selective memory.

[Nukey Shay]

BTW if kind of funny...but nothing at all was saved by using the reflect register. This hack shows that the exact code that Tod wrote fits in 4k...and features a directional sprite

 

Data tables were moved around a bit to fit in the additional sprites.

4_direction_Pacman.zip

[Sayton]

Was he trying to be funny or something cause I didn't find one thing funny in that article.

[Emehr]

"In Combat, I could fire a shot nearly halfway across the screen, or bank one off a wall and destroy my brother’s tank in a glorious explosion of seven pixels."

 

This article is inspiring me to conduct a sidewalk poll titled "How well do you remember the Atari VCS/2600?"

 

Q "In Combat, what happens to the other player when you blow them up?"

A ________________________________

 

Q "Which two directions can Pac-Man NOT face?"

A ________________________________

[MrBeefy]

"In Combat, I could fire a shot nearly halfway across the screen, or bank one off a wall and destroy my brother’s tank in a glorious explosion of seven pixels."

 

This article is inspiring me to conduct a sidewalk poll titled "How well do you remember the Atari VCS/2600?"

 

Q "In Combat, what happens to the other player when you blow them up?"

A ________________________________

 

Q "Which two directions can Pac-Man NOT face?"

A ________________________________

 

1. You get knocked back a little bit and spin

 

2. Up and Down (only down if you don't include when he dies)

 

Right????

[Recycled]

[...] like Intellivision (with its sizzling hot teen-icon spokesperson, George Plimpton) ..]

 

 

 

 

[SeaGtGruff]

Q "In Combat, what happens to the other player when you blow them up?"

1. You get knocked back a little bit and spin

If I remember correctly, you could potentially knock the other player off the side of the screen and onto the other side.

 

Michael

[mos6507]

BTW if kind of funny...but nothing at all was saved by using the reflect register. This hack shows that the exact code that Tod wrote fits in 4k...and features a directional sprite

 

Data tables were moved around a bit to fit in the additional sprites.

 

That's great to see. Just making that one change would have improved the game a lot, I think.

[Nukey Shay]

...especially since it's kind of overthinking the problem by using the reflect register to begin with. 0 bytes saved taking advantage of that hardware trick. By optimizing the program, intermediate "mouth half open" bitmaps could be added too. But I've already been there