Pac-Man Atari 2600 Review

[Atariperson23]

Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 seems to get very scathing reviews. People say the game is just straight-out unplayable. But I think the hate is not directed at the actual product's flaws, I think the hate is directed towards the fact that the actual product is not close to the arcade. But I don't know about you guys, but Pac-Man in my eyes was a quality product, simply because I thought it was so different from all the normal Pac-Man games. I mean, it was unique, and a little more lighthearted than the arcade version, which I felt like got unfairly difficult right from the start. So for that, I commend Tod Frye for making a unique version of Pac-Man (If he's still alive) and Tod, don't let a watered down arcade conversion define who you are. You also worked on California Games, Summer Games, Winter Games,  Xevious, The Swordquest Series, and finally Aquaventure (a.k.a looney and hot) So there was a lot more to him than strikes the eye.

Originality: B Most of the Pac-Man conversions are just trying to emulate the arcade original, not trying to add anything new to the mix. Well, Tod Frye trying to do something different might have got very negative reviews, but at least it somehow works. I mean, if you really think about it, playing 1 game over and over again is kind of boring. Tod Frye tried to bring something different to the table, and it isn't disastrous! His take, as I said earlier was a different approach than the oversaturated amounts of Pac-Man clones already on the market. So why are you guys criticizing a man for doing something new? And besides, Pac-Man isn't the worst maze game on the 2600, that would have to go to Merlin's Walls, Pac-Kong or Pizza Chef. So why don't you haters count your blessings and stop giving Pac-Man and Tod such a hard time! (Although, they shouldn't have named the game Pac-Man, maybe Maze-Man or Hungry-Man, because it doesn't feel like Pac-Man)

Gameplay: C

There are 1 1/2 dozen original maze games on the 2600. They range from incredible (Mines Of Minos) to great (Tunnel Runner) to good (Maze Craze) To mediocre (Go Go Home Monster) To bad (Chase The Chuck Wagon) To Unplayable (X-Man). So where does Pac-Man land? Somewhere between Maze Craze and Go Go Home Monster. I mean, it's not even close to the quality of Mines Of Minos, but it's definitely not as bad as X-Man. So Pac-Man kind of fits in the middle of the maze games.  That's not very bad when you consider all the hate and negativity Pac-Man recieves. If there's one game that deserves to be shamed, it's Surfer's Paradise. That's probably one of the worst games in 2600 history, and that's even if you do count Pac-Man! Oh, and here's a secret. Tod Frye never had 4K of memory to work with. He had 2K. He spent half of the 4K memory on a two-player mode. He only had as much memory to work with as Combat. So from that perspective, Pac-Man cannot be arcade-perfect. The gameplay is OK, a little easy and a little hard to play because of flicker, but the flicker isn't terrible, unlike what so many other people say. The movement is a little tired, but not frustrating. Lastly, the color pallette is OK, but a little too bright and dull. 
Graphics: C

The graphics are overall not anything like Pac-Man, but i'm not downgrading it because of that. I'm downgrading the game's grade because it just looks bad in general, even for a 2600 2K 1982 title. Everything looks like a big mess, with Pacman and the ghosts extremely pixelated, the colors just plain eye-straining, the ghosts hard to pinpoint, almost everything a square or rectangle, and the maze very sloppy. But again, that's tough to blame, considering how little Tod had to work with. I think he could've done better if he didn't include a 2-player mode. That way, he could've done a better job. By the way, the released version is not a prototype.

Sound Effects: D+

Sound effects are the only thing from Pac-Man that can't really be defended. The sounds are ear-gratingly sharp and terribly dull. If you want to play 2600 Pac-Man, play it with the sounds on mute. Otherwise, don't play it. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Final Grade: C

While it might not be the best arcade conversion of Pac-Man, it is still playable. If you have a couple of dollars and some minutes, give Pac-Man a try. It didn't really cause the video game industry to crash. That honor would belong to a lot of poor quality games. Not one, but a lot of rushed and poor quality games. For example, games like the "erotic" genre. I dare anyone to step forward and say they are the programmer of Custer's Revenge. I bet the person who programmed it is ashamed of it even today.

 

 

[Tinman]

I’ve always like the 2600 Pac-Man. Like most people, I was disappointed at first that it didn’t much resemble the arcade version.  But the game was fun!  And that was what mattered most.

[TrekMD]

Tod is still alive.  Saw him at PRGE 2019.  I think the hate for this games comes from it looking nothing like the arcade game.  It works well as a clone of Pac-Man, though.

[DragonGrafx-16]

Interesting review but I really see to reason to play Pac-man over Ms Pac-man on the same system...

[+sramirez2008]

1 hour ago, Tinman said:

But the game was fun!  And that was what mattered most.

This! 
 

BITD we all understood that it didn’t look like the arcade game, but that didn’t stop us from playing it. 

[keithbk]

The color choices were horrid. And the level of flashing is insipid.

 

It was rushed to the market and it shows. 

 

It could have been much better, but it wasn't given the time.

[+Karl G]

I sincerely doubt that having a two-player option used up anything close to 2K of ROM. 

[Atariperson23]

22 hours ago, DragonGrafx-16 said:

Interesting review but I really see to reason to play Pac-man over Ms Pac-man on the same system...

I didn't say that, I just said if you wanted to play something different than the average Pac-Man, you should try Pac-Man out.

[racerx]

13 hours ago, Karl G said:

I sincerely doubt that having a two-player option used up anything close to 2K of ROM. 

 

According to Tod, keeping track of both players' scores and the remaining wafers on both boards between turns did in fact use it up.

[CapitanClassic]

1 hour ago, racerx said:

 

According to Tod, keeping track of both players' scores and the remaining wafers on both boards between turns did in fact use it up.

You misunderstood Todd’s response. The RAM required to store the uneaten dots for the current and non-current player is considerable. Due to Atari wanting the game to be two player, he was unable to use RAM to help reduce flicker.

 

I doubt that that making a one-player 2K pacman game two-player would double the ROM usage (only need to create additional game logic for reading additional switch settings, game options, who is the current player, etc. Where as, keeping track of 100+ dots for 2 players would nearly double the RAM usage (tracking 128 dots would require 16 bytes. Then you have additional things to track, score (2 Bytes), and all the other stuff like temporary location of pacman, ghosts, etc)
 

Wikipedia —

Another quality-impact was his decision that two-player gameplay was important, which meant that the 23 bytes required to store the current difficulty, state of the dots on the current maze, remaining lives, and score had to be doubled for a second player,^[14] consuming 46 of the 2600's meager 128-byte memory, which precluded its use for additional game data and features.^[15]

Linked video (15) is from Portland Retro Gaming Expo, featuring Todd Frye talking about Pacman for 2600.

Edited January 16, 2020 by CapitanClassic

[zzip]

On 1/14/2020 at 8:41 PM, Atariperson23 said:

Originality: B Most of the Pac-Man conversions are just trying to emulate the arcade original, not trying to add anything new to the mix.

You are judging it from a 2020 perspective.   When this released there were no other Pac Man conversions, this was the first.     Nobody in 1982 was looking for an original spin on Pac Man,  they wanted to play something close to what they fell in love with in the arcades in their homes.   In this respect it failed.

 

Once we have basic pacman ports, only then does it even make sense to add original spins to them.

[zzip]

On 1/15/2020 at 6:44 AM, Karl G said:

I sincerely doubt that having a two-player option used up anything close to 2K of ROM. 

It was a 4K ROM,  and I believe that was a serious error on Atari's part because many of the games released after Pacman were 8K.    Pac-Man should have been their flagship title, not something to cheap out on.

[VectorGamer]

47 minutes ago, zzip said:

they wanted to play something close to what they fell in love with in the arcades in their homes.   In this respect it failed.

 

37 minutes ago, zzip said:

Pac-Man should have been their flagship title, not something to cheap out on.

QFT

[Mr SQL]

32 minutes ago, zzip said:

You are judging it from a 2020 perspective.   When this released there were no other Pac Man conversions, this was the first.     Nobody in 1982 was looking for an original spin on Pac Man,  they wanted to play something close to what they fell in love with in the arcades in their homes.   In this respect it failed.

 

Once we have basic pacman ports, only then does it even make sense to add original spins to them.

 

There were tons of different Pac ports in the early 80's on the other systems that were all interesting for being slightly different - some even ushering in changes to the pac genre like KC. And the home computers of the time saw many ports of the genre emerge with a wide range gameplay; some that you would really like and some you would never load again. I liked Atari Pacman.

 

I also liked the watch port of Pacman which moved like Atari Pacman never looking up and down and added an interesting variation in gameplay;  Pacman always looked to the left and you had to backup over the dots to eat them if you were going the wrong way. 

 

 

[+KaeruYojimbo]

59 minutes ago, Mr SQL said:

 

There were tons of different Pac ports in the early 80's on the other systems that were all interesting for being slightly different - some even ushering in changes to the pac genre like KC. And the home computers of the time saw many ports of the genre emerge with a wide range gameplay; some that you would really like and some you would never load again. I liked Atari Pacman.

KC Munchkin and KC's Krazy Chase are both great games, but they aren't ports of Pac-Man any more than arcade games like Mouse Trap and Ladybug are. They're all games in the Pac-Man genre, but they aren't meant to be Pac-Man. A port is a translation of a game from one platform to another, not a re-imagining and should be judged on its faithfulness to the original (allowing some concessions for harware limitations). Atari had previously delivered ports of Space Invaders and Missile Command that, while not arcade perfect, still managed to get enough of the important stuff right to be good. With Pac-Man they missed the mark, apparently thinking putting a yellow guy in a maze was all that was needed to call a game Pac-Man.

[scrummy]

 

KaeruYojimbo,

 

I had KC Munchkin when it came out and I enjoyed it a great deal.  My best memories are of making my own mazes and playing them, or letting others play them. That level of control, felt so fresh.  My friend Mike, got Pac-Man 2600 at release, and it was a lot of fun.   In the middle of a long play session, I went to his kitchen to get some more Kool-aid, and I accidently stepped on his parakeet.  The yellow and blue parakeet had gotten out of his gage.  I put the bird back in the cage and told Mike that his bird had died.  I felt horrible.  If you ever read this, Sorry Mike.  This is Chad from Woodhillcrest and you lived in the circle.  We played a lot in your backyard in the mud with trucks, we played a lot of kickball in your circle.  We played a lot of war in the neighborhood.  I think we wondered out loud why it looked different, but then your dad said something about how expensive the real arcade machine would be to purchase.  I don't remember thinking much more about it, back then.  

 

I love hearing all of the programming details now because it is all the kind of information that seemed like things we would never even think of having a chance to know.  I guess as a person who was there, it just bugs me to see young people who are into our hobby now, talk crap about something they understand so little. 

 

 

 

[Mr SQL]

2 hours ago, KaeruYojimbo said:

KC Munchkin and KC's Krazy Chase are both great games, but they aren't ports of Pac-Man any more than arcade games like Mouse Trap and Ladybug are. They're all games in the Pac-Man genre, but they aren't meant to be Pac-Man. A port is a translation of a game from one platform to another, not a re-imagining and should be judged on its faithfulness to the original (allowing some concessions for harware limitations). Atari had previously delivered ports of Space Invaders and Missile Command that, while not arcade perfect, still managed to get enough of the important stuff right to be good. With Pac-Man they missed the mark, apparently thinking putting a yellow guy in a maze was all that was needed to call a game Pac-Man.

Alright, here are several Pacmen close that emerged on just one systerm in the early 80's and a recent port that is different - what do you think of them?

 

Some of these are variations where there are no power pellets, some have a smiley face or even a Rocketship and they all use different graphics and styles that abstract the arcade in different ways as much to fit the hardware as to fit the artists vision.

 

You might enjoy Ms Maze as the closest port above; Grabber is arguably the most different changing the genre like KC.

 

I enjoy them all having played them except for the 1992 entry and that one looks fun too! 

 

Packetman 1981 16K: 

 

Pac Droids 1982 4K:

 

Scarfman 4K:

 

Pac-Tac 4K:

 

 

Munchman 16K:

 

Ms Gobbler 1983 16K:

 

Grabber 1983 32K:

 

Ms Maze  1984 32K:

 

Pacdude 1992 (512K CoCo III):

 

GPAC on the C64 (recent homebrew):

 

[+KaeruYojimbo]

5 hours ago, scrummy said:

 

 I guess as a person who was there, it just bugs me to see young people who are into our hobby now, talk crap about something they understand so little. 

 

As much as I like to rag on the 13-year-olds who make the same "Ha ha! This game sucks! Pac-Man can't even look up and down!" comments over and over, the fact is I was saying similar things when the game was new.

[+KaeruYojimbo]

4 hours ago, Mr SQL said:

Alright, here are several Pacmen close that emerged on just one systerm in the early 80's and a recent port that is different - what do you think of them?

 

Some of these are variations where there are no power pellets, some have a smiley face or even a Rocketship and they all use different graphics and styles that abstract the arcade in different ways as much to fit the hardware as to fit the artists vision.

 

You might enjoy Ms Maze as the closest port above; Grabber is arguably the most different changing the genre like KC.

 

Clones/knock-offs and ports are two different things. If I buy a knock-off called "Snak Man" or "Gobble 'Em" or whatever, I'm not expecting it to play just like Pac-Man and I can appreciate it for what it is. And as a "Pac-like" game, the 2600 game is fine. But by putting the name "Pac-Man" on it, Atari created a port and with that comes the expectation of a reasonable facsimile of the arcade game and what they gave us was no better than the countless other Pac-clones out there.

[christo930]

On 1/15/2020 at 6:44 AM, Karl G said:

I sincerely doubt that having a two-player option used up anything close to 2K of ROM. 

No, but it sucked up RAM.  All of the maze info for both players has to be kept in RAM along with their scores, how many men they have left and other stuff.  When you are only starting off with 1kb, that makes a difference.  Making it one player would have allowed it to be better.

The best variant of super-breakout, the advancing version,  was only one player for the same reason.  It would have had to save every single pixel of the screen to RAM when you lost a ball and the other player took their turn.

[King Atari]

My Pac-Man 2600 story:

I got my first 2600 and a load of games in the early/mid-90s (pretty sure I was in second grade), when the neighbor across the street was moving and just putting whole boxes of stuff out on the curb, apparently straight from the basement. Even at that young age, I knew I cleaned up, not only with Atari but old video game stuff in general. It was, frankly, pretty stellar. (Most of the haul I still have today, though a few things - which turned out to be fairly rare and thus I won't mention here - were stupidly sold off cheap at a flea market around 1999. A couple other specimens of the lot became the objects of childish destruction, though that stuff wouldn't be considered particularly valuable today.)

In that same general era of my life, I was also quite enamored by Pac-Man. It was a game I guess I always sort of knew 'of', but my neighbor had it for his NES and that's where I first really fell in love with it. I still remember asking my mom to call Toys-R-Us to see if they had the NES port in stock, but alas, they did not, despite their sizable selection. (*sniff*) I wasn't totally Pac-deprived though; we had a cheap LCD handheld port of the game, and heck, even Entex's Pac-Man 2 portable was part of that aforementioned curb haul. (Which I did indeed hold onto; I can turn my head and see it among all my junk down here right this very moment.) And yet, despite the load of common games that came with my 2600, Pac-Man wasn't included - or at least, it wasn't found during the dig. When it came right down to it, I really, really wanted a "real," home console Pac-Man to call my own!

Back then, and extending into the late 1990s, my dad would occasionally take me to these computer conventions, where stuff not unlike what I nabbed off the curb would be sold for cheap. I loved going to these cons, and if I could go back in time, I imagine much of what was sold for mere dollars at them would be considered quite collectible nowadays. Anyway, it was at one such convention that my young eyes fell upon a box of 2600 carts. While scanning all of the then-unfamiliar titles, I spotted a torn end label that read something like "-c-Man." Could it be true? It could and it was! I had found a Pac-Man to call my own! Needless to say, it came home with me. (Also brought home on that same trip? Missile Command, and a TAC-2 joystick from, IIRC, a different vendor. I loved the TAC-2 for its arcade-style good looks - kinda ironic given the topic currently at hand, I know -  though the sad fact of the matter was I found Missile Command's title cooler than its gameplay, though I've since come around exponentially and would almost-certainly place it in my top 10 favorites for the console.)

Maybe it's because I didn't grow up with the original arcade as an ever-present, world-conquering influence (i.e., it was still around, I knew of it, I think I even played it at the bowling alley, but the days of it being the hot new "must have" arcade game were long over), but you know, I loved that game. From the gameplay to even the (unbeknownst to me then) commonly-derided looks of it. Was it because I didn't truly know any better, or because it was 'mine'? Truth be told, it was probably both.

A few years later, it was late 1997, I was at a nearby thrift store (which is still there; I stopped in just this past weekend), and they had a load of 2600 games. Not only did I find a (kinda ratty) lose copy of the mythical E.T. game that my grade school friend once told me about, but also a minty boxed copy of Pac-Man. I couldn't resist - especially since the guy working the counter cut a deal on the Pac-Man - and both came home with me, even though my 2600 had been presumed broken for awhile by then. (Turns out the RF cord just got a bit chewed up somehow; in 2001, I decided to put electrical tape over the offending chews and discovered I could have been enjoying the thing for additional years all along!) Boy, between Pac-Man and E.T., I was really batting .1000 where universally beloved 2600 games were concerned, wasn't I? ?

 

It wasn't until 2001, when I discovered AtariAge, that I learned Pac-Man (and E.T.) were not particularly well-regarded titles in the 2600 stable. And of course, I became far better acquainted with the real Pac-Man, as well.

 

So, is the 2600 version a GOOD port of the arcade? Well, no, not really. Compared to the coin-op, yeah, it's a disappointment. I can totally understand the derision it received and receives. And yet, personally, I just can't hate the game. Part of that's nostalgia, sure (actually, a LOT of that is nostalgia). But you know, even though I have the far superior 2600 Ms. Pac-Man available, and can play the real deal at my brother's house (I rocked the Christmas gift big time one year and got him an original cabaret cabinet), every once in awhile I like to fire up that first 2600 game, not only for old time's sake, but also because, taken on its own merits, it plays okay in my eyes. Maybe it's a bit more Pac-Man 'in-name-only' than it isn't, but yeah, I think it's alright. (And, you can add me to the camp that thinks E.T. isn't that bad, as well.)

 

Of course, that's just my personal experience. Had I been around when the coin-op was fresh and new and taking the world by storm, I may very well have been disappointed that the 2600 port fell so short. Or maybe I still would have been happy to just to have a Pac-Man to call my own, I dunno.

 

Edited January 17, 2020 by King Atari

[gameman]

I get the impression Atari didn't want any home console game to compete with its Arcade business.. Activision proved the could make better games on the Atari 2600

[MrTrust]

I was a just baby back then, but every house I ever went to that had an Atari had Pac-Man, and at the time, you could just return games to the store if you simply didn't like them.  So, people couldn't have been that unhappy with it.  I remember some people ragging on the sound and graphics a bit, but not so much worse than they did with any other early 2600 port.  This meme about that and E.T. being these worst-of-all-time games is a 21st century internet thing.  Back in the 1900s, people were really, really impressed with Donkey Kong on Colecovision for crying out loud.  Tolerance for arcade inaccuacy was pretty high.

 

I'd take it over the arcade any day.  I'm not good enough at games to have the patience with arcade difficulty.

[Atariperson23]

Just now, MrTrust said:

I was a just baby back then, but every house I ever went to that had an Atari had Pac-Man, and at the time, you could just return games to the store if you simply didn't like them.  So, people couldn't have been that unhappy with it.  I remember some people ragging on the sound and graphics a bit, but not so much worse than they did with any other early 2600 port.  This meme about that and E.T. being these worst-of-all-time games is a 21st century internet thing.  Back in the 1900s, people were really, really impressed with Donkey Kong on Colecovision for crying out loud.  Tolerance for arcade inaccuacy was pretty high.

 

I'd take it over the arcade any day.  I'm not good enough at games to have the patience with arcade difficulty.

Yeah at the time it came out a lot of people didn't complain that much about the inaccuracy of Pac-Man. I found it tolerable. It's not one of the worst games ever, or even on the atari 2600... not by a long shot

[zzip]

11 hours ago, MrTrust said:

I was a just baby back then, but every house I ever went to that had an Atari had Pac-Man, and at the time, you could just return games to the store if you simply didn't like them.  So, people couldn't have been that unhappy with it.  I remember some people ragging on the sound and graphics a bit, but not so much worse than they did with any other early 2600 port. 

I don't remember people returning any carts really.  The people I knew would buy a new game every week or two and maybe play the new game a ton until they got next game.  Carts were shared among family and friends, so there was always at least one person in the fam who liked or could tolerate Pac-Man.

 

There were a lot of people who absolutely hated the game back then.  But there were also a lot of people who didn't mind it, and a number who never saw the arcade version and had nothing to judge it against.

 

11 hours ago, MrTrust said:

This meme about that and E.T. being these worst-of-all-time games is a 21st century internet thing. 

I would say the Meme started much earlier.   The media equated the fact that ET failed to sell most of its copies (due to massive overproduction) to the game being  bad.  I think it did sell 1 to 2 million, which would have meant a hit for any other 2600 game.  And the legend just grew from there.  It became not just a bad game, it became an unspeakably bad game.  And then it became so bad that it destroyed an entire industry!  So bad that people even stopped buying games for their Intellivisions and Colecovisions, and stopped going to arcades all because ET existed on the 2600!    It's all ridiculous.   There are much worse games on the 2600.

 

11 hours ago, MrTrust said:

Back in the 1900s, people were really, really impressed with Donkey Kong on Colecovision for crying out loud.  Tolerance for arcade inaccuacy was pretty high.

You have to understand that compared to arcade ports on the 2600 and INTV,  Donkey Kong on the CV was mind-blowing.   It seemed so close to the arcade...   but you have to remember that we didn't have Mame in those days where we could boot up the real DK anytime.   Maybe we went to the mall once a week, and that's the only time we'd play the real thing, so we were comparing the CV DK to our imperfect memory of the game.   Yes it was obvious that the hammers were green when they should be red, and that cut-scenes were missing.  But still those seemed like small details., we had not seen an arcade port like that before.