Pac-Man (Atari 1981)

[kzbxvz]

How to destroy a classic game example 1 for Atari 2600 from 1982.



[jcrowley1985]

The sad thing is that Atari sued Magnavox over their vastly superior K C Munchkin because it was too similar and actually won. Proving that there is no justice for quality work.

[MrVintageFan]

U cannot hate Atari u fucker

[taylorringo]

man the days when developers had to use frickin numbers to program y'know instead of variables like booleen, int, double, float, etc. man... I feel bad for the people who had to learn the binary code since programming languages didn't exist until like what the 80's? TEAM C#!!

[bocaj5509]

Great version!

[AnsonH1234]

I HATE ATARI!!!!!!

[PSspecialist]

Only 2 video games have ever made me cry. MGS4 with its epic emotional ending and this game with its... *starts crying*

[SPS148669]

The Nintendo 3DS is so weak and underpowered it would struggle to run this game at a playable speed.

[EastCoastDude99]

This game is shit compared to Ms. pacman and Jr. Pacman on the 2600. Still, I played this game for countless hours as a young kid in the early 80's.

[Oldbmwr100rs]

People wanted Pac-Man, but what could be done with only 4K of ROM and a steam powered 8 bit 6503 CPU? The controls did suck, the sounds were weird, and the play all around was lousy. The 2600 was a limited machine, but still had a lot of other games that actually played well in spite of the limitations of the machine. With it, You had a choice of either good play or good looks, not both!

[7megahertz]

@Oldbmwr100rs What could be done with 4K? We saw with Ms. Pac-Man what could be done, and then again with Jr Pac-Man. Choice of either good play or good looks? Really? Tell that to Imagic or Activision. Doesn't sound like you even owned an Atari. Anyway, there was no excuse for this shoddy port other than that it was a rush job and the guy who programmed it wasn't very good.

[Oldbmwr100rs]

@7megahertz Yes,I had a 2600,in fact Atari was the first place I worked out of high school back in '81, in fact I worked as a line tech in the last US manufacturing facility for the 2600 in sunnyvale. The first attempt at this game sucked, it was a piece of crap. In the end the company paid dearly as well. I had several acitivision games,most were simplistic and after a few plays found permanent places in the bottom of the box of games. They looked good though.

[7megahertz]

@Oldbmwr100rs That's pretty cool. Maybe you were one of the guys who put together my heavy sixer. Anyway, all Atari games are "simplistic" by modern standards, regardless of who made them. 4K limitations aside, it wasn't until the mid eighties when technology and game design advanced that was saw more than simple blast-em-ups or dot-gobblers even in the arcades. But River Raid, Pitfall, Kaboom, and H.E.R.O. at the bottom of your game box? I can only wonder what you actually liked.

[bocaj5509]

These graphics and sound are great! Many of those new games suck. Classic video games are awesome!!

[jmn1228]

Horrible version

[Ulysses447]

Damn, No wonder Nintendo kicked their ass.

[kuraku3]

i remember i had a pattern for this game and i turned over the score.

[Weegee9005]

That is a great example of PS3 graphics.

[chism26]

Et was not innoative at all doddsino

[chism26]

cool name umma67umma that my favrot floyd album

[SimpleSencilla]

Hmm, the ghosts sort of look a lot like when NES games were glitching. I probably would have returned it too. Although can't tell why the dorks at the company didn't send the game back for development when they saw the final shitty product... Wikipedia says "would have been a success if fans had not expected to play a game closer to the original" yeah right, dorks

[joebobmcfee]

crap



[ShadowDreadblade]

I remember playing this piece of shit to an immitation system... i couldnt believe my eyes when i learned there was a cartrige that was actually the exact game.

[wolfeedarkfang]

Bink Bink Bink. I know not to judge this old system by todays standards, but even back then this game was horrible. lol

[bisexualbuffthug]

It should have been named "grandfather pacman". Hehe

[AnimeFanPan]

this doesn't even look like the pac-man I played when I was younger

[bl4ckw1ngz64]

Tod Fyre could have finished the ghosts at least. No more few week efforts today thankfully.

[MrBzumpe]

Was pacman on the atari 2600 made by namcom or atari?

[siboobooboo]

Brilliant! Loved this when I was 12 26 years ago, thanks! brings back lots of memories :)

[rla20l0]

@siboobooboo how could you have loved this piece of crap?!

[PenafilmStudios]

WOW!Very good quality

[IMZEECATMAN]

why does everyone hate this game? if you want my opinion, its one of the best atari games there is.

[angelpichu1]

@IMZEECATMAN no. pitfall2 was the best on the atari!

[IMZEECATMAN]

@angelpichu1 OPINION is the key word here...

[angelpichu1]

@IMZEECATMAN sorry about that. yeah i should've read that comment by not just glancing at it huh? sorry for the misunderstanding.

[Love4SK]

KC Munchkin kills this game

[magazine198624]

esto si era jugar no esas vainas de ahora disque playstation y xbox

[willblader50]

They say that this was only a pilot version sent out for the atari when really they were still working on the official PAC man they didn't even bug test this game

[JoeyJoeJoe5000]

I really don't know what people were thinking back then, I mean sure video games were new at the time, but people like Ray Kassar had to have realized that games had to be fun in order to sell well. And all the companies that put no thought into the games they made. Only a handful of them seemed to know that game design is an art.

[vmvlkc]

The reason the ghosts flicker so bad is that there is actually only ONE ghost showing up on the screen at a time. Tod Frye programmed it so that it would sort of look like four ghost, but you're really only seeing one drawn at a time. The game has the unmistakeable stench of a rush job.

[Dakkiller1]

This port is actually more playable on a real TV set on a real 2600

[snake2006]

Everyone knows this is the greatest port ever.

Yep it didn't help the video game market crash.

*goes back to a world where a shitty version of Pacman doesn't exist*

[jephsteph]

Hey, Look. PacMan was replaced by a Pringles Potato Chip. This has to be the "Howard the Duck" version of any video game of all time. Total crap!

[shortydog27]

OMG! I so remember these noises!

[daro2096]

Wasn't this the in-pack game for a while?

[emlsox4life]

It is a horrible translation to the Atari 2600 but it brings back memories for me.

[Pacfan98]

What kind of Pac-Man port is this? A PIECE OF SHIT!!!!!!

[TheDemoniusX]

There is a legend that the creator of this port hated pac-man that is why he made it a shitty game.

[BiebricherJunge]

i have a atari ^^

[NikoDJ09]

MITTIIIIIIICCOOOOOOOOOO !!!!!

[cookie123456789012]

This game is so bad it makes me LOL!

[SmokePropaganda]

this game was epicly laughable.

although Ms Pacman and Jr Pacman for the 2600 were really good games.

[ufo5440]

You know, even though this version of Pac-Man wasn't the best, I still remember playing it with enjoyment... I think back in the day of shitty Atari game you didn't actually care if it was shitty, as long as the hype to have a game of Pac-Man or E.T gave it an automatic grade A

[causeis3002]

I remember playing this PAC-MAN when I was a Litle kid with my Father, I was so happy in the past days with those moments.

[skillless]

Seriously, at the very least, dont make blinking ghost that's so frigging hard to see

[ChocolateChad127]

o.O

[doddsino]

I actually prefer ET to this game...at least it tried to be innovative, even if it was still not really playable.

The fuckin asshole Tod Frye who programmed this game, gloated about how it made him a millionaire and even photocopied his checks to show off to coworkers. In fact even Atair admitts that it was a piss poor job...they tried harder with Ms. Pacman...but...too late.

Burn in hell Tod Frye!

[sanjouindacapo]

I agree with you about Tod Frye - lazy programming ruined what could have been a great game. However, as I stated in another comment, E.T. is playable, but you have to know how to play it. The pits were hard to get out because many players just kept on pressing up when they emerged - the proper way to exit is to press left or right until you have cleared the pit. The collision detection is superb for a game which was rushed for the Christmas season :D

[Tornado1994]

At least ET is better than Action 52.(Which is beyond horrid) ET was actaully designed by Howard Scott Warshaw and developed in just 5 weeks. Thanks to Ray Kassar who ordered him to have the game out by September 1982. To me ET was a lame dissapointment. It's not a terrible game, it's just not very good and very supbar.

[cookie123456789012]

@doddsino

Tod threatend that if he wasnt a millionare he will leave Atari and then go to Activision.

I'll preferr it if he left.

[Swampert384]

@doddsino Actually, while Todd Frye was payed for the game, Atari was in such a hurry to do this, they took the prototype which Todd showed them, and marketed it as the completed game. If you watch the Gaming Historian's vie=deo on the crash, you'll learn alot.

[VaderNES]

I honestly like this. Granted, it isn't like the Famicom port or the original arcade, but I found it to be fairly decent and pretty fun, and not even close to being the worst game (that is E.T.)

[sanjouindacapo]

E.T. is actually a very good game. The problem was that most players in that day did not bother to read the manual, and they were not ready for adventure games. The collision detection is well-done and the trick to avoid falling back into pits is to not push up when you emerge. The programmers took great care with little things like making the footsteps get louder as the characters drew nearer. There was even an Easter egg which showed a Yar.

E.T. is a great game once you know how to play it :D

[VaderNES]

I know how to play it, but it is just bland, and the pits are a pain in the arse. I would rather play a better game, like David Crane's masterpiece: Pitfall.

[SoulMaster71]

The unspeakable words, the words which were never to be even thought, and you typed and posted them. It's not as bad as, say, any first-person shooter game where you have to aim and turn with the second stick (worst control setup EVER), but it was a horribly broken game where it was too easy to fall into the wrong pits and too hard to get out. And the FBI taking parts of the phone? Yeah, annoying. Yet it's good enough that I can say it with pride:

I've beaten ET, Destroyer of the Industry!

[wutzernutzer]

Ahhh! This was the first Pac-Man I ever played. We got the Tele-Games system with the 27 target games at Sears. We also got this version of Pac-Man. We had kept the box it came in, in the back room for years. It was so big it had thumbnails of all the cool games on the back. Years later we finally threw it out and it was a like throwing away a little piece of my childhood. Great memories.

[caelitus1]

and when you beat the level you get no music, the screen just refreshes lol

[CidSilverWing]

I'll tell you guys ALL the problems this piece of shit has.

Most obviously the graphics are complete ass. The maze was flipped over 90 degrees to the right which explains why the tunnels are located at the top and bottom, and the exit for the ghost pen is at the right side. The pacs look like dashes and the power pacs look like squares.

The absence of the siren wail, the "bam-bam-bam" sound when eating (instead of "wakka-wakka-wakka") and the horrible intro and death jingles.

[CidSilverWing]

Cont'd:

The graphics card of the Atari is also unable to draw more than 2 custom sprites/missile graphics at the same time, so the developers cheated by having the ghosts be drawn 1 out of 4 frames by utilizing an illusion (of peripheral vision?) to make them appear simultaneously. But as you can see this didn't help the slightest and only degraded the graphics even further.

[paulp1021]

For Christ's sakes, what do you expect? This game was made in the 80's. But this game does bring back good memories.

[CidSilverWing]

You raise an important question there: Why then did they port this game to the Atari 26'er? They just fucked it up so badly it's atrocious.

[TyVulpine]

Not all Atari 2600 games were bad. River Raid, Missile Command, Pitfall, et al.

[sanjouindacapo]

It's not the system that made this game bad; it's the way the game was programmed - a rush-job. Subsequent ports such as Ms. Pac-Man and Pac-Man Jr. were far better. Ms. Pac-Man, while still not entirely faithful had far better graphics and less blinking, and the sounds weren't annoying. Jr. Pac-Man is I think the best with amazingly-done sounds and scrolling. Check out some other Atari 2600 games to see what happens when programmers and designers care about design and gameplay :)

[mousekabeat]

you're 18 you didn't live during the time this was appreciated. of course the graphics are bad compared to today. we didn't know the future and didn't care, for us it was fun.

[CidSilverWing]

The Arcade graphics were way better, but of course that has always been an isue.

[nicknook68]

I always thought this was a result of laziness on Atari's part, and not of the limited technology. Back in the 80s, I couldn't understand how Activision was coming out with awesome games with cool graphics and gameplay and Atari just kept buying up licenses to great Arcade videogames and ruining them in translation. If I recall, years later, Ms. Pacman on the same system didn't have blinking ghosts or huge rectangular pellets, and the character would turn in the direction it was eating.

[MirrorKnight]

One of the reasons why the video game market crashed in 1983.

[BXBOMBER457]

the new one is way better

[boggosmile]

this really sad...WAAAHHHHH!

[Onono6]

wrong file game dude

[Kupuntu]

This so horrible that I don't even know what to say...

[Umma6umma]

Man, there are so many things wrong with this port, no woonder it was such a crushing disappointment to Atari gamers.

The ghosts flicker like crazy; the frame rate of the video makes it slightly worse, but only slightly. Instead of the fast, tight movement of the arcade, you sluggishly slide Pac around the maze, and he always faces sideways, even when moving up or down.

[Umma6umma]

Also, the controls are so whack that it's a chore even moving up or down; you see me struggling to do this occasionaly. Also, the tunnels on either side in the arcade version are replaced by holes at the top and bottom, and Pac takes a strangely long time to move from them.

And then, of course, you have the flat sounds.

Atrocious. No surprise it helped to take down Atari and the entire video game industry of the early 80's.