a misunderstood game

[Skatepunk60]

why does everyone hate the first PAC MAN god me and my friend tom play that for hours on end i love that game because its so damn hard , but every review gives it a bad rating because its too hard but who wants a really easy pac man game thats no fun.

[Alex]

I've never heard the argument that it was too hard, just that is wasn't programmed very well, or maybe rushed out the door. Compare it to Ms. Pac-Man or Pac-Man Jr. and you'll see the difference. And there have been more modern versions of Pac-Man for the 2600. I'm not here to bash Tod Frye or Pac-Man, as that has been done to death, just raising a point that has been brought up before. Then again, his was the first version for the system, so others had the benefit of time and hindsight.

 

[ 07-13-2001: Message edited by: Alex ]

[Skatepunk60]

i own ms pac man and jr pac man both of which are too easy and not as cool

[Nukey Shay]

PacMan -would- have been an alright game if it didn't CALL itself PacMan (and maybe fixed up that control some). Nothing ruins a game more than high expectations.

[Osbo]

I love ms pacman, but the pacman should go faster like the original arcade machine... I don't know... it's just my opinion.

[NE146]

Yeah I think Beat Em and Eat Em is an often misunderstood game. But it's a classic in every sense of the word and is true fun for the whole family! Try it now! You will get a lot of Fun & Thrill!

 

 

(first person to place that quote gets a banana)

[Marco(2)]

quote:

---

Originally posted by NE146:

Yeah I think Beat Em and Eat Em is an often misunderstood game. But it's a classic in every sense of the word and is true fun for the whole family! Try it now! You will get a lot of Fun & Thrill!

 

 

(first person to place that quote gets a banana)

---

 

 

Gimme my banana!!

 

Cheers,

 

Marco

[NE146]

But you didn't guess where the quote came from! ;D

[Joel D. Park]

My brother and I used to play the heck out of Pac-Man as well. We had no idea if it had been poorly written or not. It was a very cool game, especially when we only had 3 or 4 games to pick from.

[NE146]

Sorry for the frivoulous post above, (the quote is from Moon Cresta btw) but I just had to add another 2 cents in...

 

Wait a minute.. you're saying that Jr. Pacman is EASIER than the original 2600 pacman!? All criticism of the vcs port of pacman aside, I always thought it was a darn easy game.. Sure you could make it more challenging by changing the 'blue-time' of the ghosts or make your pacman move slower but all in all it's a pretty simplistic/easy version of pacman that I easily played for hours at a time (which I very well did because yes, I liked it too)

 

Jr pacman on the other hand, is pretty hard! It's fast, the mazes are large, and the ghosts pursue you without mercy. I don't last very long with JrPacman and it's a definitely a challenge all the way through

 

Anyone else agree?

 

As far as Ms.Pacman goes, once you get up to the 4th maze it gets harder to survive. But you're right in that the game is a little slow. But I hope you're not comparing it to the now-common "fast" MsPacman arcade machines because in that case 2600 mspac is SLOOOOOWWWWW... hehehheh

[Albert]

I certainly didn't know anything about "bad programming" when Pac-Man arrived for the 2600, but I could still recognize a terrible and obviously rushed conversion of an arcade game so many loved.

 

Here are some of the questions I remember having:

 

- Why are the ghosts all the same color?

- What is it with this damn flickering?

- Why couldn't they even get the playfield colors right?

- Why is the tunnel on the top/bottom instead of left/right?

- Why doesn't Pac-Man look up and down when traveling in those directions?

- Nice power pill!

- What the hell is it with this annoying sound every time Pac-Man eats a pellet?

- Oh my god what is that "tune" that plays when you start the game?

- Why is the maze so completely unlike the real game?

 

Give me Ms. Pac-Man or Jr. Pac-Man any day.

 

..Al

 

[ 07-16-2001: Message edited by: Albert ]

[jahfish]

you need to get the book "mastering pac man" by ken huston (new american library, 1981) and you'll think different ....

[NE146]

Whatever happened to Ken Huston anyway? He used to be such a visible literary figure on the video game / Blackjack front. Did he die or something?

[Nukey Shay]

http://www.httpboards.com/boards/index.cgi...r=borisbj21&b=3

BTW it's Ken Uston.

 

Albert:

You must consider that the game's code is squeezed into 4k...Ms.PacMan is double that, and Jr. is Quadruple. The game had to change or omit some things to do this. Color was one, and I think that the "ghost"'s color was really just one value being ROR'ed in memory (which is why in order to get a nice shade of blue, they had to use yellow for the "normal" color and pink for the changeback color). Unlike the arcade game, they are all the same color at the same time.

Also, to make the game code easily recognise when the PacMan character and one of the ghosts touch, they used just one player object to display all four ghosts, and used the regular collision registers outright (the slightest touch is fatal). Since they can move anywhere, the program had to redraw the entire character each time it displayed one. This increases object flicker, and the game colors were altered to make them more visible (if you watch the "attract" mode, you will notice that the ghosts are even less visible due to shifting colors). The flicker is less noticable in Ms., where a longer routine was used during collisions so that both P/M objects could be used to display any character. And even less in Jr., where an even longer routine was used that would decide when to redraw the character or split an already on-screen player object into seperate zones.

The "ball" P/M object was used for all four energizers and the two-color "vitamin" (you really can't make any distinguishable fruit shapes using only two bits).

The tunnel ran from top-to-bottom because the original idea was to have the arcade game's ratio preserved (the arcade screen is taller than it is wide), and because it's easier to code this into mirror-mode.

The maze itself was changed to accomodate the less memory-hungry mirror-mode screen...and this is also why there is no other screen displayed. The same lack of memory goes for the short "tune", and general lack of animations.

The stick routine is pretty bad since the subroutine is only executed once per program revolution...if it were executed more than that, I guess the ghosts would be even more transparent.

In short, a pretty good achievement for only 4k (no PacMan, but the basics are there).

So why only 4k?

Either Atari was overly greedy, or the license to produce the game was too spendy and they had to skimp to make any margin on the deal...I dunno. You gotta admit, they sure went after a lot of games for infringement. Or maybe it WAS the programmer's fault ("Sure, I can get that in 4k...no prob.").

 

[ 07-16-2001: Message edited by: Nukey Shay ]

[Ze_ro]

I for one never thought Pacman was all that bad a game for the 2600... Though I do believe it should have done better. Obviously, the technical difficulties of making a game on the 2600 rear their ugly head and make things quite more difficult. I can forgive the flashing (It's one of the things I've learned to live with when it comes to the Atari), and I can forgive the color and other graphics problems. The only thing I really had a problem with was the maze layout. Without the same maze as the arcade version, it might as well be Lock n' Chase, or Alien, or one of the other many clones out there.

 

In fact... I kinda like the "bong" noise that the game makes when you eat the dots/dashes.

 

--Zero

[jahfish]

BTW, the pacman board game is really cool too ... i often play it with my daughter!

[Nukey Shay]

A cool project would be to hack the Jr. code to play the original (like Ms. was). Should be able to get the whole thing in there...intermissions and all. And have speedier gameplay to boot.

[Albert]

Nukey,

 

While I understand that they had a limited budget to deal with when programming Pac-Man for the 2600, they deviated so far from the original game that they might as well have called it something else. Sure, the basic concept is there, but for Atari to go after everyone else making Pac-Man clones, they should have at least made the effort to produce a decent Pac-Man themselves.

 

I think what happened is they absolutely rushed the game to market to capitalize on the then popularity of Pac-Man. They probably went to Tod Frye and said, "Listen, if you can program this game in a month there's a million dollars in it for you." I'm sure Tod worked his ass off to get the game done in time. I'm also sure that given more time he could have made the game better. So I don't blame him, unless he promised more than he could deliver (something we'll probably never know!)

 

I'm a programmer myself, so I can appreciate the miracles pulled off in many 2600 games. I'm just saying that it could have been better given more time or memory or both. But there's no point in crying over spilled milk at this point in the game.

 

..Al

[DEBRO]

Todd responded to Pacman in Cyberpunk's "Stella at 20: Volume 2" video. Both volumes are great and if you don't have a copy I highly recommend getting them. Anyway he states that him and Bob Pollaro?? finished games at the same time so they were presented Defender and Pacman as there next projects and Todd let Bob choose. Bob said since he didn't see how Pacman could be done he'd pick Defender. Well, Todd mentions that he was going to use variable flicker as in Ms.Pacman for the ghosts using vertical separation of the players. He actually had the code working when his supervisor told him that it was interesting and no one had ever done it before. Since Todd was on probation he thought why should he do something new like that and just went with the straight flicker we see now.

 

I used to bash the 2600 version of Pacman until I saw his explanation. Yes there have been better versions of Pacman done such as Ebivision's version done in 4K but Todd was the poineer. Someone had to be first. And sometimes better versions build on previous versions.

 

BTW Cyberroach has a short movie of the Ebivision version of Pacman in action. This one uses the variable flicker Todd was going to use.

[Scott Stilphen]

I have both those Stella at 20 tapes, and I don't recall that being Tod's reason for Pac-Man. I believe he stated that Atari only gave him 4K to work with. He had a better kernel written (which ended up in Ms. Pac), but by the time Atari offered him 8K, it was too late into the project to incorporate it.

[ratfink]

I remember Pac-Man coming out for the 2600 right around my birthday and my mom took me to KayBee to buy it as my birthday present. I was bouncing off the walls I was so excited!!

 

So we get to the store and they've got it running on a big-screen TV in the store and I just stared at that ugly screen with those blocky graphics and flickering ghosts and nearly cried it was so bad! Atari broke my heart that day and I'm not sure I've ever forgiven them. I obviously didn't go home with Pac-Man that day and I can't even remember what I got instead but I'm sure it was better. How could it get any worse than Pac-Man?

[DEBRO]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Scott Stilphen:

I have both those Stella at 20 tapes, and I don't recall that being Tod's reason for Pac-Man. I believe he stated that Atari only gave him 4K to work with. He had a better kernel written (which ended up in Ms. Pac), but by the time Atari offered him 8K, it was too late into the project to incorporate it.

---

 

Hmmm...I've watched that tape about 50 times and that's what I got from him but I'll gladly watch it again (another excuse to watch it...horray) to see if I'm wrong.

[Nukey Shay]

Albert--

The odd thing is that ads promoting 2600 PacMan were showing up in magazines almost a full year before the game hit the stores...I just find it difficult to believe that nobody was working on the design until the last minute (this was supposed to be THE game for the console...Space Invaders' run was pretty much over). While it's true that games such as Alien or Lock-n-Chase have a better control routine and less flicker within the confines of 4k, there is also a little less of everything. Even so, I'm more apt to believe that Atari wanted to release the game as cheaply as possible rather than up the memory that it definately needed to make a decent port of it (the hype was already enough to make the game sell itself). I suppose we'll never know why Atari wouldn't increase the memory for such an important project. What was the first 8k Atari-made cart, anyway?

 

DEBRO--

I doubt he said something like that...there's just no room left in 4k to implement it (unless you removed some other things, making it even less -cough- like the arcade game...if that's possible).

[NE146]

Yeah! Does anyone remember those TV ads that came out months before the game release that showed video of the ARCADE game screens being played (and in closeup if I remember correctly) and said something like "this is Pacman the hit arcade game. And you can only play it... on Atari" etc..

 

Now THAT gave me tons of sleepless nights dreaming about the pacman that was to come ;D

No need to write anything further because we obviously all know how that ended

[Heavy Sixer]

Re: Ken Uston; I heard that he died of a heart attack years ago (1988?).

Re: Pac-Man; I got my Atari in 1985; it was the "Darth Vader" model and had no pack-in games. A few months later, I found both Combat and Pac-Man at a flea market for $2.50 each. I was only 9, and pretty much any video game I could play at home was a cool thing! Pac-Man was as cool as anything, so I had no complaints. E.T.? Indiana Jones? Sneak 'N Peek? I loved 'em all! Still do...

 

HEAVY***6***er