Pac-Man (2600)

Pac-Man

Arcade - USA - 1st edition.

Developer Atari Publisher Atari Published 1982-??-?? Platforms Atari 2600 Genres Action, Maze, Maze traversal, Single-screen Series Pac-Man Multiplayer Alternating versus Distribution Commercial

Pac-Man is a maze traversal video game designed and programmed by Tod Frye and published by Atari for the Atari 2600 in 1982. It is 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 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 4 KB. These constraints led to this 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.

Personal

Own?	Yes. I own two cartridges of this game and one manual.
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.

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  USA.

Documentation

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  Manual.

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  Pac-Mania: Top Strategies For Home & Arcade Pac-Man.

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  The Winners' Book of Video Games.

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  How to Beat Atari, Intellivision, and Other Home Video Games.

Videos

Game play.

Play Online

Atari 2600

Representation

Strong female character?	Fail	There are no women.
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
Original Designer	Toru Iwatani
Port Programmer	Tod Frye
Box Art	James Kelly

Links