Nonsense. One game couldn't save the 2600. The Colecovision blew it away and the C64 blew the Coleco away. I'd say the Amiga blew 5be C64 away, but honestly the C64 had more quality games. Graphics weren't everything.
@@VonMagXL Were you alive back then? Just in case you weren’t, or were very young, here’s a recap: In 1982, Atari was king…The 2600 was on fire! Pac-Man was the biggest thing on planet Earth! No one cared about Colecovision or the C64 yet. Definitely not nonsense. But yes, I’m exaggerating about being on back order for 42 years.
@@d.vaughn8990 Yeah, I was 5 and a half when Pac-Man came out at the arcade. My dad already had an Intellivision at that point. Pac-Man on it wasn't a total disappointment like Atari. Colecovision came out right when arcades were at their peak. My dad bought us one within two months of its release. Minds blown. The games looked so close to the arcade versions by comparison! Talk about being pumped up! We got Donkey Kong, Lady Bug, Cosmic Avenger and Mouse Trap with the system. That's two arcade spin-offs of Pac-Man that were very close to the arcade versions. We forgot all about the Atari 2600 Pac-Man in short order (I picked up the Atari expansion module for the Colecovision at a garage sale in 1983. I could then play both sets of games without disconnecting the systems. But I played games like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Cosmic Ark, Atlantis, Riddle of the Sphinx, Asteroids, Missile Command and Warlords on the Atari, not its crappy Pac-Man (we had it, but no one in my family liked it). My brother was a master at Ladybug. Oddly, my mom was ever only good at Mousetrap. She played for over 3 hours. We were outside playing Frisbee after 30 minutes. A couple of years after getting a C64, neither console got much play. Its Pac-Man and Donkey Kong were nearly perfect.
I always knew they could make a much better Pac-Man for the 2600 especially when Ms. Pac-Man came out and showed how much closer to an arcade version they could have created if they really wanted to. This version looks really great!
I can't believe how good this is. The ghosts even slow down in the tunnel as they do in the arcade version. If I had this in 1982, I would have played the hell out of it.
An arcade accurate maze, sound effects, ghost's A.I., AND on screen scoring all on a 4-K game cart. That's what we expected back in '82-'83 when the game was released. Thank you for sharing it with us my friend, good stuff! 👍 👍
ya, back when I was trying to grow the channel, typically from the feedback I have gotten over the years, intros are not really liked much. the viewer wants to get right into the subject. I still have intros on some videos, but they are under 5 seconds.
making Pac-Man for the 2600 was the beginning of the end of Atari and ET was pretty much the last nail in the coffin.if they done it like this one or even how they made Ms. Pac-Man this would be a different story
Oversaturation was the main cause of the crash, (not to mention the growing popularity of computers at the time)no one game caused the crash. Plus as bad as ET and Pacman were there were actually WORSE games on the 2600, not to mention the growing pop Firefly comes to my mind, not to mention all those "educational" games And there was NO crash at all where I was born.
@@Mattchu.the.Pikachu The prototype story is not true, according to the programmer Tod Frye, who told this story at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo (the recording of this is on RU-vid). The game was released just as he intended it to be. Frye's excuse is that it was so early in home gaming that they didn't really know what made for a good adaptation (this is nonsense, since Space Invaders, Missile Command and Defender were all really fun, successful home versions of arcade games). It was more as if Frye himself didn't understand what made home adaptations fun. He claims the background was not black because Atari had a policy of allowing black backgrounds only in space games, in order to avoid CRT burn-in issues. Frye felt the 2 player mode was essential, and sacrificed game elements so that second player save state could be stored while the other player had their turn. (This may be why this 4k cart looks so much better- it didn't seem to have a 2 player option).
My first comment I left was at the start of the video before I really watched it now I'm at basically the end of the video and I have to say that that is very impressive! I may go back and rewatch this and compare it to some video footage of the Miss Pac-Man for 2600 just to see but as far as pure Pac-Man this looks like the gameplay might even be better than other versions that came out back in the day on systems like the Atari 8-bits! That looks very smooth and you're right those ghosts do move very fast at times! I think this would have prevented the crash back in the day even if ET had come out just as broken! I mean sure it's not arcade perfect but for the 2600 I'm not sure there's any better you could do even if you up the cart size
There is an 8k version that I believe is in development. It's phenomenal looking and sounding! I saw a video on RU-vid where Tod Frye saw this game and he appeared to be blown away. Very complimentary of the work on it. it's certainly impressive.
I don't want to be a downer, but this version has the same nasty sprite flicker as Atari's original port, which the 8K version got magically rid of. The difference between the 4K and the 8K version is imho nearly as big as between the 4K version and Atari's version (which was bad looking but still playable)
I agree, the main purpose I was reading in the manual is the programmer wanted to see what could have been done in the limited 4K of the original. going to 8k will drastically improve the game as what is seen the Pac Man 8K rom :)
I admit that I enjoyed playing the original 2600 version of Pac-Man. They did a really nice job with this game, given the space limitations. I wonder if the ghost patterns were taken from the arcade version.
If this would've been available back in the day instead of the ABOMINATION we all got with the 2600; I would've literally ate this up in a heart beat (no pun intended.)
Yeah, if Atari would have released something like this, they probably could have doubled sales. Word of mouth spreads quickly and when they say "you have to get Pacman for your console" they would go out and get it. At least this uses the same maze layout and the classic video game font numbers for the score as well.
13 year old me would have loved this (except that I also had the better port for my 400), but 47 year old me wouldn't be able to take that flicker. That would kill my eyes. :D Great job on that version though! It's amazing what people can do with hardware years after it's been out. Heck, some guy (or gal) made a killer version of H.E.R.O. for the ZX81/TS1000. It requires a large memory rampak (64k I think) but it's amazing what that hardware was/is capable of.
Cool, he made the game respecting the capacity of the cartridge at the time (4k, rare 8k) .. Once a man made an atari game with 200KB and said look what they could have done at the time, but the guy forgot it didn't exist 200 KB for domestic use at the time of atari ...
This is the better version of Pac Man then the version of Pac Man we got for the Atari 2600 I agree with you Willy the Pac Man version even the Namco Muesum version of Pac Man for the Xbox 360 is better even Ms.Pac man for the Atari 2600 was a little bit then the Pac Man version we got for the Atari 2600 I had to play it because that was the version we had in my house dude lol I'm a old school gamer I just love the classic Atari games
The 4K part messed me up at first because I'm so used to hearing 4K in reference to modern TV resolutions LOL But that being said the story behind the Pac-Man of old was that he had to program it quick time and it's basically a beta just to see if the 2600 could do it as I understand and both Pac-Man Jr and Miss Pac-Man for the 2600 that came out I'll be at kind of after the crash started we're much better but it's interesting to see this version to and wonder what if what if this came out back when and the crash had never happened. Nintendo may never risen to dominance if that were the case that would be a very different world
If this came out in the day, it would have sold many systems...ironic how little work went into the original, but great work went into Atari's ports to competitor's consoles.
Actually, Tod Frye was only given a short amount of time to get something done by Atari for the 1981 holiday season. Today programmers messing around on the 2600 dont have those constraints, so can take their time to get something pretty good. I imagine Tod would have come up with something similar had he been given the proper development time.
pac man arcade is 8k and does not flicker as bad as the 4k version. The best version I have seen so far is Pac Man 8K, it has a nice attract screen and intermissions! I may do a video on that one, but it was not released on a cart just a rom.
so it can be played without mods? i know the 8k would have issues without some kind of mod, as discussed earlier... except, maybe it can play without mod too? what are your thoughts?
I think the original Atari Pac-Man was sadly a rush job. it should have been giving more time to work out the bugs. back then, I was find with not being 100 perfect but knowing what happen behind the scenes. yeah, it was clearly a race to the Christmas Holiday season.
I have PAC-MAN 4K on my harmony cart....I saw the cut scenes ......do I have a different version? The rom file says PAC-MAN 4K. Playing it on my 7800 and it actually sounds better than the video I'm watching here
There was a rom on Atariage.com where someone added cut scenes and corrected some of the bad notes for the opening music. I wish I had that version on my cartridge.
It's too fast and hard to play. You literally have to not try to eat the ghosts when they become blue to play it... If you try to eat the ghosts, then they will get you when they return, because they are super hard! It's also hard to see how you can eat 4 of them in a row. It's that challenging! But, at least it is a colorized TV Gameboy version of an arcade this time. NES' 8bit Pac-man was not great, but way better and probably the best console version at the time!
@@macgyver6999 ok, I did a search. found nothing about a black screen fairchild channel F pac man game thats 11k. Only saw a Devianart artwork that is not a game.
This version definetly is much better than the worse first one. But the game can be improved about the cut scenes. Remember the recently galagon version of galaga almost equal to the original arcade version in graphics in sounds. The detaila of attacks enemys is equal. Sincerely in galagon I don't miss the arcade original for nothing. Take care atarians....!!!!
may not be nearly as flashy in person given the tricks necessary due to the limitations of the number of active sprites on the 2600 a lot of refresh tricks alternating between drawn frames have to be used ,, this makes recording 2600 games a challenge and can introduce considerable flicker in the recording that you wont see in person on a crt display depends on the frame rate and method the recording encoder device uses.. for example I have seen videos on youtube that show space invaders gameplay but they appear to be missing the dropped bombs , they are still present "but" the recording device failed to capture the interleaved alternate frame layer there drawn on ...
