Pac-Man (2600)
Pac-Man | ||||||||||||||||
Arcade - USA - 1st edition. |
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Pac-Man is a maze traversal video game developed and published by Atari for the Atari 2600 in 1982.
The game was meant to be a port of the arcade game Pac-Man, but it is so different from the original, it can't really be called the same game. Atari made two primary blunders during the development of this port, they gave the game's sole developer Tod Frye an unusually short length of time to create the game in order to make it available for Christmas, and they wouldn't let him use the more expensive 8 KB ROM chips that had just been made available, so he had to cram everything into only 4 KB. These constraints led to this universally panned monstrosity. Despite being a terrible port, Atari 2600 Pac-Man went on to sell 7 million copies, and became the best-selling video game at the time. However, its poor quality ultimately hurt the video game industry and contributed to the crash of 1983.
Contents
Personal
Own? | Yes. I own a CIB, two more loose cartridges, and one manual. |
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Won? | No. The game doesn't have an ending. |
I first played this version of Pac-Man on my home Atari around 1986. Having seen the original in the arcade, everyone in my family saw that this was a mockery. I have no desire to try for a high score.
Review
1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
Best Version: Atari 2600
— This section contains spoilers! —
Good
- Had I never seen the original Pac-Man, I may have thought this game was a passable Atari title.
- The speed of the ghosts and length of the power pills can be customized to fit your playing needs.
- The manual is well-made and the cartoons are pretty good.
Bad
- Graphically, the game is quite dull. The maze and dots are the same color, there's not much variation, Pac-Man doesn't look correct or display up and down movement, the ghosts look wrong, etc.
- The flicker of the ghosts makes them difficult to see, and even harder to distinguish their color (although, since they all use the same AI, it doesn't matter).
- All the additional variation of the game like the cut-scenes, fruit, music, etc., has been removed.
Ugly
- The game utterly fails as a port. Atari 2600 games are expected to be inferior, but this one is garbage.
Media
Box Art
This is a good cover. Unlike the art on most other ports, Pac-Man isn't given legs or other mysterious appendages, and the ghosts, though monochromatic, look great. And, unlike many other Atari titles where the box art is one of the best features, James Kelly accurately depicts the terrible maze and wafers. It should be noted that his original art did have Pac-Man with hands and legs, but Atari management told him to tone it down. However, his original art was used on the cartridge, manual, and on the box of the European releases, and on a later run of the US release.
Documentation
Videos
Play Online
Representation
Strong female character? | Fail | There are no women. |
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Bechdel test? | Fail | There is no dialogue. |
Strong person of color character? | Fail | There are no human characters. |
Queer character? | Fail | There are no queer characters. |
Credits
Role | Staff |
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Original Designer | Toru Iwatani |
Port Programmer | Tod Frye |
Box Art | James Kelly |
Links
- Video Games
- 1982 Video Games
- Video games developed by Atari
- Video games published by Atari
- Atari 2600 Games
- Video Game Genre - Action
- Video Game Genre - Maze
- Video Game Genre - Maze traversal
- Video Game Genre - Single-screen
- Multiplayer
- Multiplayer Alternating versus
- Software Distribution Model - Commercial
- Video Games I Own
- Video Games That Can't Be Beaten
- Video Game Rating - 1
- Video Game Graphics Rating - 1
- Video Game Sound Rating - 1
- Video games which can be played online
- Video games without a strong female character
- Video games that fail the Bechdel test
- Video games without a strong person of color character
- Video games without a queer character
- Video Game Prime Order - Action, Strategy, Adventure