Classic Game Room - PAC-MAN review for Atari Computer 

This brings back fond memories. When my wife and I got married in 1983 we bought an Atari 800 computer with our wedding gift money and spent our honeymoon playing Pacman and Centipede, both of which were must owns on the system. The thing I loved most about the 800 was that you could type in programs out of magazines (which took forever) and get free games which you saved to cassette tape. My favorite was clone of the 2600 game Stampede. Halcyon days.

Ah, the Atari 400 PacMan. A couple years ago I won an estate sale auction in Toronto of a former writer of some computer magazine from the early 80s. In the lot I bought was a pile of Commodore, Apple II and Atari 400/800 games. What was really interesting was a number of the Atari 400 games - PacMan, H.E.R.O and a few others - were actually eeprom prototype copies sent to the press prior to their release. As far as I can tell, there doesn't seem to be any difference from the finished version Mark is reviewing and the prototype I have.

Yup. This will work on the 400 and 800: The McDonald's Ataris. I started with the 800 and moved up through to the the XLE. Their word processor cartridge was awesome. I was the only kid in my 6th grade class who handed in assignments typed on (an 800) computer and printed on (a Seiko (owned by Epson)) dot matrix printer, in 1982-83, when I was ten. All the games rocked and even made my Colecovision friends jealous. You should grad an ST, unless I just send one into the show. They competed with Amigas, and, as usual, were actually better than their Commodore counterparts, even though they weren't as well supported...

Wow, those ghosts bounces as they move!

This was pretty funny! Loved it!

I can confirm this works (quite well) on the 800XL.

This was the first 400 game I played and having known no other home port other than the 2600 version, this really blew me away. Like you mentioned, the colors, the sounds and even speed(considering) are really done quite well. After playing this and Wizard of Wor from Roklan, I was sold on A8 gaming. Cool video. Cheers

Nice review. I had the Atarisoft C-64 version of Pac-Man in the early 80's and that version also started slow.

Looks like an awesome home port of Pacman for 1982!

Nice, a Atari version of Pac Man that's actually good!

This was the first video game I ever played on our Atari 800xl, still one of my favorites of all time.

"It also hooks up to a printer." Absolute gold.

Looks great, but I can see the ghosts don't follow the arcade's patterns since they travel up the center vertical corridors (on either side of the "T"), which never happens in the arcade version.

Wow. REALLY classic game room.

Everytime i think of Atari it just makes me remember Where did you learn to fly? Where did you learn to fly? Where did you learn to fly? Where did you learn to fly? Where did you learn to fly?

Nice review mark! People might laugh at me for saying this but my favorite version of Pacman is probably miss pacman on the 2600. There is just something about it with a Sega Genesis controller and there just something about it that's different from the rest. I know the graphics are worse but I love it.

The best early 80's version of Pacman out there and yes it works on the 409 :)

Pac man will forever live on.Even on home computers.:)

I love Mark's reviews, that's my fuckin' praaaahhhblem!

I have my TV volume set to 9 out of 100 for Mark's videos...

I played this on my Atari 800 endlessly back in the day; I'm pretty sure it played fine on the 400 too, though I think I'd already traded up by the time I got it. In the early days that this dates from, Atari usually gave their ROM cartridge games pretty low specs so they'd play on all the machines--even Star Raiders played fine on the 400. It's a good game. The slowness in the early levels is probably less from hardware limitations than it is Atari deliberately making the game easy. An arcade game wants to be relatively hard, because it's a quarter a play and you want to keep those quarters coming; it needs to be just easy enough that you feel you might do better next time. With home games, on the other hand, the customers were plunking down quite a bit of cash up front, and Atari's motivation was to make them feel happy for doing that--that means a relatively gentle learning curve. (A more extreme case of this is Defender, my absolute favorite game for the Atari 8-bit computers. I never did get any good at the arcade version, which was famously tough. The computer version had the look down, but it was much easier, to the point that I actually did end up mastering it at one point.)

All of the atari computer carts worked on the Atari 400 and 800. I had an Atari 400 in the day.

The Genesis controller; still working wonders after all these years.

It's been 13 years and I still regret my parents selling my Atari XE and games. :'( Atari week is going to be hard to watch given my mixed emotions.

I have the 400XL. I got it at goodwill for $15.00. I use an old atari 2600 controller and I have the same game as you!

I grew up playing Atari - and it was an a 400. Such an odd "keyboard" it had - but I usually just used my Genesis controller.

excellent thanks for the video

oh man gosh... dude. its more beautiful visuals than ps4!

I like the Atari version for Commodore64 better. And using my 14 inch CRT tv. I now have the exact same video quality on my modified C64 Breadbin. That is a 250407 board with a 5volt VIC-II chip. Using composit cable of extremely high quality. Man... That contrast just stands ultra sharp and no distortion on any pixels. Letters are readable. I just love C64 Atari Pacman.

I miss the little bit of scratching at the beginning of the video.

You're confused about the machine. It's a final gasp redesign of the Atari 400/Atari 800/Atari 1200xe/ Atari 65xe that made the keyboard optional. It's not related to the 7800 console at all, it's the full computer and only runs the games made for the computer.

I like this version, but I was bummed that it doesn't contain the intermissions....

i remember my mom getting me a ps1 when i was like 8... it came with a namco ms pac-man game..i remember thinking, how is she so good at this lol.. she didnt really like any other games but this...

Is it compatible with the ATAREKS system?

This review makes me want to read my CGC comic book again.

I like it but the ghosts' and pac-man's movement seems a bit fidgety. Pretty minor complaint though given the limitations.

anyone ever play the 4 player pacman thing in an arcade/dave and busters?

Ahhh good old pac man. Graphics dont look to bad on the Atari home comp. Much better then the 2600.....

do pac man on nes, u can get it on virtual console on a 3ds for $5, but its like the arcade version

Hyvä Lauri!!!

it works on the 400. i have it

the reason Pac-Man seems slow at the begining is because the arcade version has 2 difficulty settings. The normal setting the game does move slower. Most arcade operators used the hard setting due to players knowing the patterns and staying on the games for long times on a single quarter. Eventually Midway came out with a chip modification where the normal setting was the same as the hard on the original chip and the hard setting was even harder.

Had to get K.C. Munchkin in there somewhere,didn't you? :D

Mark. You should visit Playstation Home one last time before they get rid of it!

Classic.

I'm glad to have an original Atari 400 just to play Pac-Man

this must have been uploaded when classic game room left youtube for a while

Hey ***** any plans on uploading reviews in 60 FPS? Just wondering.

better than the other Atari version where pac-man didn't even rear up and down while moving.

A game that's great no matter what system it's on.

Who do you think you are, K.C Munchkin? Hahahahaha :-) On another note, I remembered trying to play this game on my 8K Atari 400, and it did not go well. Think the last level of the arcade Pacman not going well. Issue with the games is to have enough memory in the Atari computer to get it to work.

Love is show it is awesome

👍

Pacman is cool.

Should review some of the awful pacman games on the Dreamcast. Some truly bad versions of Qbert, Cenepede, Frogger, all on Dreamcast. Amazing system but had some really bad turds.

I honestly prefer this version to even the arcade. Not so much Ms PAC though.

How many atari computers were there lol

Its a shame you don't have an atari 800 to review this on, its the best atari computer.

Oh, you think that just having the game is cool enough, well I also have it, in box! And the box is unnecessarily huge.

I play "Pacman" on my PlayStation 3 everyday.

I just bought this game for my best friend. He's a pac man nut. He'll probably just use it as a display piece.

The dislikes are from the ghosts

looks like baby pac man

Didn't get past 0:01 because this review has not yet been approved by Lord Karnage.

Torilla tavataan :D

223 baby

Welcome to the under 301 club, how tough are you?

This version is awesome. The 2600 version sucked

Nuts and milk

instead of PAC-MAN we should have MOLE-MAN.

Does it have dlc? Jk

Eh, I prefer the original arcade version of Pac-Man a lot better than this one.

:V

O_O

first

you think thats good why not play pacman on GBA with the Gameboy player 3 x better with good quality and big screen (the screen can be bigger than a arcade machine's screen!)

Man you are so beautiful i don't care who knows it.

This console never came here in Brazil due to our carp government and because we was still on the domain of military dictatorship.

I really hate this game!

i think i'm the only person on earth who dont likes pac-man