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Atari pac man12/18/2023 ![]() At first Pac-Man sold fairly well, but once word of mouth got around about how bad the port was sales started to drop off. Atari made much better versions of Pac-Man for the Atari 400/800, 5200, Intellivision, and Colecovision (under the Atarisoft label), but the 2600 version is the one most people remember. The bottom line is that the 2600 version of Pac-Man, while adequate, isn't all that good. It wasn't until recently that Tod set the record straight when he was interviewed for the book "Atari Inc: Business Is Fun". For this reason it's not too hard to believe some of these rumors might be true. Tod Frye has a mystique about him as he was the programmer for a large number of unreleased games and was known to be a 'character' around Atari. People need a reason to explain why their favorite game wasn't the best it could have been. So why do these rumors keep circulating? There are two main reasons: 1. The last rumor is the most oft repeated one, but it too us false as Pac-Man was released in April and never intended to be a Christmas title (the game wasn't finished until September, far too late for Christmas). The second rumor sounds believable at first glance since other programmers had passed on Pac-Man due to it having to fit into 4K, but Tod designed the game to be 4K from the get go. Tod was also on probation at the time, so he made sure that he put a lot of work into Pac-Man (the quality is due to it being his first game). This is incorrect as Tod (and several other Atari employees) started getting game royalties in order to keep them from jumping ship to other companies and didn't receive them until after Pac-Man was done. The first rumor implies that Tod got his royalty agreement before he finished Pac-Man and didn't care about its quality. ![]() Tod held the half-finished prototype for ransom until Atari agreed to give him a giant royalty to finish it, knowing that they couldn't find another programmer in time for the crucial Chirstmas holidy.Īs I mentioned before, all three of these rumors are completely false. Tod had an amazing 8K version of Pac-Man up and running by Atari forced him to strip it down to fit on a 4K cartridge.ģ. Tod purposely botched Pac-Man because he was already promised a huge royalty and didn't care about the quality after that.Ģ. I'll attempt to address the most prominent myths here:ġ. There are many rumors floating around that have been retold so many times that they're now considered firm facts. These questions are a bit hard to answer. Everyone wanted to know the same thing what happened to Pac-Man, and why didn't Atari fix it? After the months of hype, the advertisements stating that no other system would have Pac-Man, and the promise of everyone's favorite game coming home, Atari fans felt betrayed. Had it been any other game Atari fans would have passed it off as another 'average at best' conversion and moved on, but this wasn't just any game, it was Pac-Man! Atari had botched the most popular game in history and for 2600 fans everywhere there was just no excuse. The 2600 version of Pac-Man can best be described as 'adequate'. The response was unanimous, for Pac-Man fans everywhere were shouting "What the heck? This doesn't look like Pac-Man!" After being hyped to death for months, Pac-Man was finally released to eager 2600 fans on what was declared Pac-Man Day (April 3rd 1982). At the time of its release, Pac-Man was the most popular arcade game in the world, and therefore was Atari's hottest license. Along with E.T., the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man will long be known as one of the bigger disappointments in the 2600's game library.
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