You have summarized my experience with this game 100%. I never encountered an original Pac-Man cab in the wild, there were no expectations and there was no such thing as a bad video game when I was seven. We didn't have a lot of money when I was a kid, I didn't get my Atari until after the Crash. And even after I got my NES, I still had my Atari hooked up to a B&W TV, and I could fiddle with the brightness and contrast to turn the maze invisible. #OldFart
Considering this is a 4kB ROM with 128 bytes of RAM, it is quite phenomenal. Those VFD handhelds were 2kB and had all the sprites "prebaked" in the VFD tube, so no memory needed for that. Pac-Man arcade had 22kB of ROM.
I love this alternative reality Pac Man. As you suggest, just pretend the arcade game never existed and this would have caught the Atari world on fire and have been recognized as a classic.
I'm sorry, but as a programmer and a fan of the Atari 800 computer, I have to tell you that this game, being one of the first things I ever saw on the Atari 2600, was directly and specifically responsible for my having a deep disinterest in, and actually active distaste for, the 2600 from the 1980s through today. I've been given 2600s as gifts and never taken them out of the box because I had zero interest in playing them. This is at best a CRUDE APPROXIMATION of Pac-Man. AT BEST The board is wrong, the ghosts flicker, and I didn't even remember Pac-Man having eyes but let's throw that in too. If you didn't know it was supposed to be Pac-Man, you might never know it was supposed to be Pac-Man dash dash you think it was just another of the third party looking to play a likes that came out by the dozens and sold for a lot less than the real thing. Speaking as a programmer, and specifically as a programmer of the Atari 800 and other technologies of that era, I grant you that the 2600 was a real challenge to program. I've never attempted it and doubt I could do it usefully. So I cannot say with any certainty whether or not it would have been possible to do better than what we see here. However, given what I have seen other programmers accomplished, especially in more recent years, I strongly suspect it may have been possible to do much better and that the programmers -- either "of that era," overall, who didn't have 40 years experience and evidence showing them clever tricks and things that could be pulled off, or simply those who happened to get picked for this project, simply weren't up to the challenge. I can't really criticize them on technical grounds, because I myself would not have been up to the challenge for damn sure. But If it turned out this were the best I could do on the platform, _I_ would have had the self-respect to give up, quit, and refuse to associate myself with this travesty, and moreover I would have done everything I could, within Atari, to keep it from getting released looking like this. Even if, as seems very likely, Atari management had overruled the concerns of a "mere" programmer and videogame player, and had gone ahead and foisted this thing on the market ANYWAY, at the very least my name would be recorded in history as having TRIED to Do The Right Thing.
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You have summarized my experience with this game 100%. I never encountered an original Pac-Man cab in the wild, there were no expectations and there was no such thing as a bad video game when I was seven.
We didn't have a lot of money when I was a kid, I didn't get my Atari until after the Crash. And even after I got my NES, I still had my Atari hooked up to a B&W TV, and I could fiddle with the brightness and contrast to turn the maze invisible. #OldFart
Considering this is a 4kB ROM with 128 bytes of RAM, it is quite phenomenal. Those VFD handhelds were 2kB and had all the sprites "prebaked" in the VFD tube, so no memory needed for that. Pac-Man arcade had 22kB of ROM.
My first Atari game (besides combat) and I knew what it was like from playing at friends house and still loved it.
I enjoyed this version
I actually like this game. It's still pretty fun. I like ms pacman better, but this one is not bad at all.
I had that board game
@@briandavis6898 me too!
I love this alternative reality Pac Man. As you suggest, just pretend the arcade game never existed and this would have caught the Atari world on fire and have been recognized as a classic.
I'm sorry, but as a programmer and a fan of the Atari 800 computer, I have to tell you that this game, being one of the first things I ever saw on the Atari 2600, was directly and specifically responsible for my having a deep disinterest in, and actually active distaste for, the 2600 from the 1980s through today. I've been given 2600s as gifts and never taken them out of the box because I had zero interest in playing them.
This is at best a CRUDE APPROXIMATION of Pac-Man. AT BEST The board is wrong, the ghosts flicker, and I didn't even remember Pac-Man having eyes but let's throw that in too. If you didn't know it was supposed to be Pac-Man, you might never know it was supposed to be Pac-Man dash dash you think it was just another of the third party looking to play a likes that came out by the dozens and sold for a lot less than the real thing.
Speaking as a programmer, and specifically as a programmer of the Atari 800 and other technologies of that era, I grant you that the 2600 was a real challenge to program. I've never attempted it and doubt I could do it usefully. So I cannot say with any certainty whether or not it would have been possible to do better than what we see here. However, given what I have seen other programmers accomplished, especially in more recent years, I strongly suspect it may have been possible to do much better and that the programmers -- either "of that era," overall, who didn't have 40 years experience and evidence showing them clever tricks and things that could be pulled off, or simply those who happened to get picked for this project, simply weren't up to the challenge. I can't really criticize them on technical grounds, because I myself would not have been up to the challenge for damn sure. But If it turned out this were the best I could do on the platform, _I_ would have had the self-respect to give up, quit, and refuse to associate myself with this travesty, and moreover I would have done everything I could, within Atari, to keep it from getting released looking like this. Even if, as seems very likely, Atari management had overruled the concerns of a "mere" programmer and videogame player, and had gone ahead and foisted this thing on the market ANYWAY, at the very least my name would be recorded in history as having TRIED to Do The Right Thing.