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New pacman for atari 2600


DINTAR816

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The 5200/A8 port of Ms. Pac-Man included this cornering speed up. It also included the slowdown for eating dots. The dot slowdown was a little too much, and it made the game feel a little sluggish, especially on early levels. I expect these things in "perfect" ports, like PS1, GBA, and up. (I also look for the trick to face a different direction at a stopped wall) . Not all of them feel right.

I wouldn't be so quick to say that 5th gen emulation is flawless. Namco Museum on the N64 doesn't do "cruise elroy" mode at all as far as I can tell.

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I wouldn't be so quick to say that 5th gen emulation is flawless. Namco Museum on the N64 doesn't do "cruise elroy" mode at all as far as I can tell.

Agreed! Definitely not. That's why I placed quotes around "perfect". The average person wouldn't know some things should be present, react differently, sound different, etc. These systems are capable of recreating an almost flawless experience, but often have missing elements. I expect certain things, and I look for them. I didn't mean to imply that I find them.. :)

 

I meant to also refer back to the value of emulation as a reference. I became aware of a lot of nuances from emulation, way before I bought my actual arcade machines. Many of them are missing little things here and there. It can help explain those "this looks good, but something feels a little off" situations.

Edited by darryl1970
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Namco Museum (just regular) on Playstation 1 (classic) and Nintendo 64 are terrible. I can't stand those versions, they are terrible. If you are going by these for judging accuracy, you are missing out.

 

 

 

*However*, Namco Museum 50th Anniversary Edition is VERY good for emulation. Gameboy advance 50th is only 'decent', the sound effects are messed up, but at least the code is intact.

 

Opcode made a 'code perfect' pac-man for Colecovision also somewhat recently (pac-man collection).

 

I always test out 'code-perfect' by using a 'go through blinky' little trick on the first stage.

 

Ms. Pac-man is accurate code-wise, if you keep eating power pellets on the first stage, until the sound glitches out. If it does-the emulation is pretty good.

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Namco Museum (just regular) on Playstation 1 (classic) and Nintendo 64 are terrible. I can't stand those versions, they are terrible. If you are going by these for judging accuracy, you are missing out.

 

 

 

*However*, Namco Museum 50th Anniversary Edition is VERY good for emulation. Gameboy advance 50th is only 'decent', the sound effects are messed up, but at least the code is intact.

 

Opcode made a 'code perfect' pac-man for Colecovision also somewhat recently (pac-man collection).

 

I always test out 'code-perfect' by using a 'go through blinky' little trick on the first stage.

 

Ms. Pac-man is accurate code-wise, if you keep eating power pellets on the first stage, until the sound glitches out. If it does-the emulation is pretty good.

Thanks for sharing your tests. That is pretty interesting. I almost mentioned Namco 50th Anniversary! For example, the sampled sound on the N64 is painful to my ears. It sounds like the eating sound (Pac and Ms) truncates one sample and harshly starts it over. Something is just annoying.

 

On the other hand, the Namco 50th sound is a little "slow". It is as if they chose to actually emulate the sound, and it's taxing on the CPU. Even though it's a little off, I prefer that, because it feels more authentic.

 

Opcode did a great job on his code conversion/ports. I would love to see the "go through Blinky" trick in a video.

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Quote: I've never observed this phenom but of course I don't have a Pacman Arcade in my garage either. PC emulation doesn't feel right to me so I have to rely on consolized ports or the occasional Namco Museum.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

I do hope you've tried pac-man on MAME, and not just Namco museum on a Nintendo 64 or Playstation 1 (classic) emulator.

 

When you play pac-man, you MUST play on a CRT monitor or tv. The reason it doesn't feel right on a flatscreen is because it is upscaling a low resolution game to a high resolution. Playing on a crt will allow you to notice pac-man moving very quickly based on your movements (no lag).

 

Of course, the ultimate would be to get the REAL pac-man arcade machine which is already in its native 224×288 resolution (obviously). But you can get a special video card that will output in super low resolution (ultramarc or whatever) to an arccade monitor. If you don't, the resolution of pac-man will be blurred, because it is being magnified/distorted for any resolution higher than 224×288. So most pc emulations won't look quite right, but the mame version is likely the best (on a crt monitor). Some say that older mame versions did pac-man even better than the more recent ones also.

 

I guess I'm into all things pac-man :P

Edited by KAZ
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Quote: I've never observed this phenom but of course I don't have a Pacman Arcade in my garage either. PC emulation doesn't feel right to me so I have to rely on consolized ports or the occasional Namco Museum.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

I do hope you've tried pac-man on MAME, and not just Namco museum on a Nintendo 64 or Playstation 1 (classic) emulator.

 

When you play pac-man, you MUST play on a CRT monitor or tv. The reason it doesn't feel right on a flatscreen is because it is upscaling a low resolution game to a high resolution. Playing on a crt will allow you to notice pac-man moving very quickly based on your movements (no lag).

 

Of course, the ultimate would be to get the REAL pac-man arcade machine which is already in its native 224×288 resolution (obviously). But you can get a special video card that will output in super low resolution (ultramarc or whatever) to an arccade monitor. If you don't, the resolution of pac-man will be blurred, because it is being magnified/distorted for any resolution higher than 224×288. So most pc emulations won't look quite right, but the mame version is likely the best (on a crt monitor). Some say that older mame versions did pac-man even better than the more recent ones also.

 

I guess I'm into all things pac-man :P

Is Raspberry Pi MAME a legit option? Please don't laugh. Probably doing it wrong, but when I start working a real job and get a bit of disposable income to burn, this would be a nice piece of kit to assemble on my downtime:

 

http://www.retrobuiltgames.com/the-build-page/porta-pi-arcade-kit/

teaserbox_4093272389.jpg

 

True it's no arcade monitor (and I do prefer to play retro games on tube displays), but unless I get composite working and find a CRT that will work standing on it's side, a little LCD screen isn't a huge crime. Even the newer Ms Pacman + Galaga Class of '81 arcade machines use LCD displays. :P

Edited by stardust4ever
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Quote: I've never observed this phenom but of course I don't have a Pacman Arcade in my garage either. PC emulation doesn't feel right to me so I have to rely on consolized ports or the occasional Namco Museum.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

I do hope you've tried pac-man on MAME, and not just Namco museum on a Nintendo 64 or Playstation 1 (classic) emulator.

 

When you play pac-man, you MUST play on a CRT monitor or tv. The reason it doesn't feel right on a flatscreen is because it is upscaling a low resolution game to a high resolution. Playing on a crt will allow you to notice pac-man moving very quickly based on your movements (no lag).

 

Of course, the ultimate would be to get the REAL pac-man arcade machine which is already in its native 224×288 resolution (obviously). But you can get a special video card that will output in super low resolution (ultramarc or whatever) to an arccade monitor. If you don't, the resolution of pac-man will be blurred, because it is being magnified/distorted for any resolution higher than 224×288. So most pc emulations won't look quite right, but the mame version is likely the best (on a crt monitor). Some say that older mame versions did pac-man even better than the more recent ones also.

 

I guess I'm into all things pac-man :P

Sweet. I do play it on MAME from time to time. Even though I have a flat panel, I spent a LONG time dialing in the controls (made my own png overlay) to try to mimick the arcade look. Based it off of the Pac-Man Fever album cover and my cabaret.

post-13491-0-66696400-1430836758_thumb.png

It's actually "Hangly Man", which I kind of prefer. It was the version (in a cabaret cabinet even) that was at the local Boy's Club, CYC, YMCA, and corner store, in my area. The YMCA still had a machine. I got the owner to sell it. :) It still allows me to check out the basic mechanics, although I doubt I will be able to recreate the Blink trick, since the maze is slightly different.

 

I use my Multicade (Running MAME, on left) for all others.

post-13491-0-12150200-1430837297_thumb.png

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When you play pac-man, you MUST play on a CRT monitor or tv. The reason it doesn't feel right on a flatscreen is because it is upscaling a low resolution game to a high resolution.

 

Consider this: Mame easily pixel-bins in reverse. Pixel binning is a photography term that means you take a specified small number of pixels and treat them as one. Or oversampling. That means if an original game object is a10x10 pixel square on an original 256x192 display, it will now be represented by a 40x40 square on a 1024x768 display. But it will move and behave as if it was on a 256x192 grid. It will still scroll 1 pixel at a time in 256x192, or 4 pixels at a time if rendering at 1024x768. You do not all-of-a-sudden automatically gain more discrete movements or smoother more rounded corners.

 

In simpler terms, a pixel on a 256x192 screen would be, well, 1 pixel on a monitor of 256x192 resolution. But that 1 pixel now becomes 4 smaller pixels on a 1024x768. Don't worry. The object's movements happen in either 1-pixel steps on the lower res 256x192 screen, or in "same-sized", "same-distance" movements born out of a 4-pixel jump on the higher 1024x768 screen.

 

As long as mame is made aware of the destination LCD resolution (or the current desktop's res) there is no funky interpolation. Unless you want it. All the scaling is done in mame itself and not on the LCD.

 

You can have smoothing filters and all that going on, if you like.. And some of it looks like shit. Some looks awesome. Just gotta explore the options!

 

 

I do hope you've tried pac-man on MAME, and not just Namco museum on a Nintendo 64 or Playstation 1 (classic) emulator.

 

That's right!

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With pac-man, you don't WANT smooth graphics, you want sharp jagged edges on everything (like the opposite of anti-aliasing). Doesn't going up in resolution cause things to be blurry/magnified? You lose focus when you magnify?

 

I liked reading your comments, I'm positive you know far more about this stuff than me (I'm not joking).

 

In a game like Mike tyson's punchout, when played on an lcd/flatscreen, what causes the lag in controller movements? Isn't it the upscaling of the resolution? I would think pac-man would suffer from the same type of lag as that, but perhaps mame compensates? These are just questions I want to understand more accurately.

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Is Raspberry Pi MAME a legit option? Please don't laugh. Probably doing it wrong, but when I start working a real job and get a bit of disposable income to burn, this would be a nice piece of kit to assemble on my downtime:

 

http://www.retrobuiltgames.com/the-build-page/porta-pi-arcade-kit/

teaserbox_4093272389.jpg

 

True it's no arcade monitor (and I do prefer to play retro games on tube displays), but unless I get composite working and find a CRT that will work standing on it's side, a little LCD screen isn't a huge crime. Even the newer Ms Pacman + Galaga Class of '81 arcade machines use LCD displays. :P

Love the mini cabinet. I saw those at the Cleveland Classic Game Show last year. I am not sure what is the most cost effective. I have found the windows computers to be the best for MAME. It concerns me that the MAME game is stretched out across the widescreen monitor. I am not sure if that is just a setting or a limitation the MAME for the pi. However, Win MAME allows preservation of the aspect ration. One can even add the bezel art to fill the area. It's pretty sweet! A core2Duo with Win7 would run about everything. Speed and RAM would determine the generation.

 

I had an old control panel. I bought sticks and buttons. They can be purchased reasonably on x-arcade's web site, or you could attach an x-arcade stick to a laptop. It might not LOOK the same on the outside, but it will probably play pretty well.

 

I populated my control panel with sticks and buttons. I used an iPac-2 for my pc interface. It works really well! X-arcade has their own solution, but I found the iPac is already lined up with the MAME defaults. Instead of an old laptop, I bought a 3Ghz PC from a local community college. It was only $50, and has 4GB of RAM. I can play about every MAME game, up to Tekken3.

 

I tore the computer down to fit in my enclosure.

post-13491-0-09384200-1430838424_thumb.jpg

 

And I use a regular PC monitor. I use LCD, because I can rotate this monitor to vertical for vertical games. The overlay png does a decent job of recreating the scanline effect. However, one could easily use a standard CRT. These are the only pictures I have at work. These were taken when I hooked an old 40" lcd up to my box. Yes, I turned it on its side to play Mr. Do. lol.

post-13491-0-44896500-1430839418_thumb.pngpost-13491-0-88970700-1430839424_thumb.png

 

 

 

If this is a topic of interest, I'd recommend we create a new thread. I do not want to hijac this thread. Maybe there is an emulation/multicade one out there. Idk. Let me know, and I'll gladly join the chat.

 

I would almost recommend just adding an X-arcade stick to your PC, or buy a cheap PC and x-arcade. Might be around the same price. I do really like those custom cabinets though!!

 

One last note. I only built this, because I won the basic box at a gaming convention. I had to do something with it. Otherwise, I would have probably just gone with the X-arcade. The version with the Trakball is even a bigger bonus for games like Centipede. Doesn't work too badly for Tempest either.

Edited by darryl1970
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With pac-man, you don't WANT smooth graphics, you want sharp jagged edges on everything (like the opposite of anti-aliasing). Doesn't going up in resolution cause things to be blurry/magnified? You lose focus when you magnify?

 

I liked reading your comments, I'm positive you know far more about this stuff than me (I'm not joking).

 

In a game like Mike tyson's punchout, when played on an lcd/flatscreen, what causes the lag in controller movements? Isn't it the upscaling of the resolution? I would think pac-man would suffer from the same type of lag as that, but perhaps mame compensates? These are just questions I want to understand more accurately.

MAME overlays, when used properly, can simulate the appearance of the blocky pixels. I cropped my Mr.Do a little small in the above picture, but it has a scanline effect on it. Makes things look jagged and blocky!

 

Here's a closeup. Keep in mind this is on a 40" TV, so you're seeing more flaws in the overlaw than one would one a 17".

post-13491-0-22998100-1430839991_thumb.png

Edited by darryl1970
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Doesn't going up in resolution cause things to be blurry/magnified? You lose focus when you magnify?

 

Depends on how it's done. Original image:

post-3056-0-69239200-1430840649.png

 

Scaled using Cubic Interpolation:

post-3056-0-91938600-1430840652.png

 

Linear Interpolation:

post-3056-0-78589600-1430840656.png

 

No Interpolation:

post-3056-0-55310900-1430840661.png

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I HAVE to try that now! I wonder if that will work on Hangly. Thanks for sharing!!!!

Maybe.. but with the maze change I highly doubt it. Pass-throughs, and thus deduced pass-through patterns were and are par for the course in Pacman, so of course Hangly-Man would have them too.. someone just has to figure some out. :)

 

The Ms. Pac Strawberry one was one of my favorites as a kid. That particular one was published in a magazine back in the day so I thought everyone knew it. You don't have to be Billy Mitchell. :lol:

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I HAVE to try that now! I wonder if that will work on Hangly. Thanks for sharing!!!!

Maybe.. but with the maze change I highly doubt it. Pass-throughs, and thus deduced pass-through patterns were and are par for the course in Pacman, so of course Hangly-Man would have them too.. someone just has to figure some out. :)

 

The Ms. Pac Strawberry one was one of my favorites as a kid. That particular one was published in a magazine back in the day so I thought everyone knew it. You don't have to be Billy Mitchell. :lol:

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There's another one on the second stage of pac-man...you have to first clear a route to the destination (eat all dots).

 

You lose a life, and then on each subsequent life, you travel up towards blinky (right at the start), and you can pass through him every time (while he is on his way to his home territory.)

You can repeat as long as you have lives left.

 

You will be facing left and he is going right.

 

Directions (the best I can): You take the first upwards left tunnel from where you start, and then go up around the ghost box, and take the rightmost upward corridor. From there you go through blinky, before he ever reaches his home. It is way easier to just show on a vid.

 

I don't know how I found it, but I was looking for other patterns that could be replicated for pass throughs.

 

I'll try to post it if I can manage to vid it. :P

Edited by KAZ
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Depends on how it's done. Original image:

60x50.png

 

Scaled using Cubic Interpolation:

240x200 cubic.png

 

Linear Interpolation:

240x200 linear.png

 

No Interpolation:

240x200 no interpolation.png

Scanline effects are always nice as well. Just note that with portrait mode games, they need to be vertical.
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Love the mini cabinet. I saw those at the Cleveland Classic Game Show last year. I am not sure what is the most cost effective. I have found the windows computers to be the best for MAME. It concerns me that the MAME game is stretched out across the widescreen monitor. I am not sure if that is just a setting or a limitation the MAME for the pi. However, Win MAME allows preservation of the aspect ration. One can even add the bezel art to fill the area. It's pretty sweet! A core2Duo with Win7 would run about everything. Speed and RAM would determine the generation.

 

I had an old control panel. I bought sticks and buttons. They can be purchased reasonably on x-arcade's web site, or you could attach an x-arcade stick to a laptop. It might not LOOK the same on the outside, but it will probably play pretty well.

 

I populated my control panel with sticks and buttons. I used an iPac-2 for my pc interface. It works really well! X-arcade has their own solution, but I found the iPac is already lined up with the MAME defaults. Instead of an old laptop, I bought a 3Ghz PC from a local community college. It was only $50, and has 4GB of RAM. I can play about every MAME game, up to Tekken3.

 

I tore the computer down to fit in my enclosure.

20130812_220422.jpg

 

And I use a regular PC monitor. I use LCD, because I can rotate this monitor to vertical for vertical games. The overlay png does a decent job of recreating the scanline effect. However, one could easily use a standard CRT. These are the only pictures I have at work. These were taken when I hooked an old 40" lcd up to my box. Yes, I turned it on its side to play Mr. Do. lol.

PacOnBigScreen.png MrDO.png

 

 

 

If this is a topic of interest, I'd recommend we create a new thread. I do not want to hijac this thread. Maybe there is an emulation/multicade one out there. Idk. Let me know, and I'll gladly join the chat.

 

I would almost recommend just adding an X-arcade stick to your PC, or buy a cheap PC and x-arcade. Might be around the same price. I do really like those custom cabinets though!!

 

One last note. I only built this, because I won the basic box at a gaming convention. I had to do something with it. Otherwise, I would have probably just gone with the X-arcade. The version with the Trakball is even a bigger bonus for games like Centipede. Doesn't work too badly for Tempest either.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply.

 

While the X-Arcade cab is definitely the Rolls Royce of MAME options, space is extremely limited in my current living arangements which is one reason why the Porta-Pi is attractive to me. I may do this as a summer build. I do have an old 1600x1200 monitor which would be perfect for a custom MAME build. I'd probably use my old Athlon 3000XP shuttle PC which I tricked out in 2005. It holds some sentamental value to me and I never could bring myself to part with it.

http://stardust4ever.deviantart.com/art/The-Old-Shuttle-PC-156980683

 

If mods wanna create a new thread for this, go ahead. There's too many posts atm to quote everything and paste over. I'm browsing mobile (New 3DS) right now at my fiance.

Edited by stardust4ever
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