Pac-Man: Atari Archive Episode 66

The best-selling VCS game (by a wide margin) finally makes its debut in the Atari Archive chronology, as March 1982 is when Atari published its highly anticipated home conversion of Pac-Man to its best-selling platform. Riding the wave of Pac-Mania in the west and using its legal muscle to minimize competing "gobble games" before their own version came out, Pac-Man represents the high-water mark for this era of the American home console industry commercially. Critically the game saw a more subdued reception, and here we contextualize the design decisions by Tod Frye that went into this version of the game and clear up some of the myth-making that has sprung up in the decades since it came out.
If you enjoyed this video, consider supporting Atari Archive through its Patreon at www.patreon.com/atariarchive. You can also find my book, Atari Archive Vol 1. for sale through Limited Run Games (and soon, Amazon).

[@GTV-Japan]

From March 16, 1982 to eternity!

[@jonnyd9132]

This was my introduction to the Pac-Man series at the tender age of 6. My uncle had bought an Atari 2600 for about $50 USD for my birthday and the pack-in game was Pac-Man. Needless to say, I was hooked. It was the definitive version of my childhood and, at age six mind you, I had NO idea at all of the controversy that surrounded this version of the game. In fact for a while I preferred the 2600 version to the arcade original! Yeah I know, weird, but when your young and don't know any better I guess… 🤷‍♂

[@Hologhoul]

I remember as kid that we loved the game here in the UK and didn't really stop to even discuss that it wasn't the same as in the arcade. We were young but we already understood that, and we really enjoyed this version and its own character. My cousin referred to 'scared blue ghosts' and we were all amused by the game. It's true that later versions/variants of this, and Defender, showed improvements, but the VCS was a big challenge for the devs and I think Tod Frye gets too much flack for this game. I'm glad it sold huge numbers. Great video by the way! Fascinating to see it ending upon on the Channel F and things.

[@sandal_thong8631]

People had Pac-Man fever and would buy anything Pac-Man, including that Coleco Arcade handheld which was pretty low-res.

[@feralstorm]

Interesting to note that the four ghosts actually DO have individual colors in the code - they were just near indistinguishable, and can be mode distinct by plugging different color values into the binary.

[@Toad64]

This is interesting, because I always thought they had a slight color to them, but I was thinking maybe I was tricking myself!

[@Zeffarian]

Yeah, it's difficult to notice due to them flickering on a blue background.

[@sa3270]

Just to clarify for others, you're talking about the Atari 2600 version. I believe that two of the ghosts are a yellow-green color, and two are a yellow-pink color. When they overlap, they appear a more pure yellow color. The power pills also share the same colors, which are alternated every field.

[@SoulforSale]

Played this into the early hours of Sunday morning for a decade or longer. Loved stacking up the free men in the bottom of the screen and we always called the bonus item "the pizza". Truly the good old days.

[@musickid43]

I will still never understand how this version of pacman's death sound became a go to sound effect for tv shows and commercials for "video game"

[@sandal_thong8631]

WB owned Atari.

[@Dorelaxen]

It may not be good, but I sure played the hell out of it back in the day. We played the games we had regardless of whether they were good or not.

[@SoulforSale]

Exactly. Was that way during the NES and Genesis days too!

[@Hologhoul]

It was good. Just not too close to the arcade.

[@jeffr23817]

My aunt got me this for Christmas, I'm guessing in '82.... I fricken LOVED it!!!! And I honestly don't ever remember playing the arcade version of it before I got it for the Atari 2600. So all the hate it gets just fricken boggles my mind! We had Mrs. Pac-man too, and I thought that was an even better game.... I could play that for hours! But I never thought there was anything wrong with Pac-man at all.... On a side note, we also had "kind of" a Pac-man clone for the TI 99 4-a called Munch Man that was a LOT of fun too! You didn't eat dots, you actually built a chain through a maze and the "monsters" chasing you changed with every level!

[@KeithFroehlich07]

As bad as Pac-Man was for the 2600 that's how good Ms Pac-Man and Phoenix were. The original GORF is good too. But if you have a 2600 now I recommend GORF Arcade if you can get one. They're going to be re-releasing it in December.

[@jeffr23817]

I have the Midway Defender 40th Anniversary Arcade 1up machine and that has the GORF arcade as one of the games you can play on it.@@KeithFroehlich07

[@alanelkins2408]

My dad has told the story several times of getting the VCS version of Pac-Man and talking about how disappointed he was ("It was a piece of junk!"), and how much better the Ms. Pac-Man release was by comparison. Also, it's been interesting to hear Todd Frye comment on the game since then; I think there's a video floating around on KZbin where's he's at a convention and someone's showing him a more recent homebrew of the game, and he's talking about how impressed he is about some of the features that years of hindsight and hobbyist work have revealed, which he wouldn't have thought to implement at the time. Loved this video-and glad to see a somewhat higher view count on this video! This channel is, like, the second-most criminally underrated retro game channels on KZbin, and it deserves a much wider audience than it gets.

[@sandal_thong8631]

My feeling is that now that he got to Pac-Man, people will find this video in their search, then go on to check out other game histories he did on his channel. Already it has almost 4x as many views as Haunted House and Super Breakout, 8.4K vs 2.2K each.

[@billkendrick1]

Frye has said Atari had a rule that only "space games" were allowed to have a black background, which is why VCS Pac-Man has a colored one.

[@AtariArchive]

I’ve seen that, but he also has said he deliberately chose not to use the arcade color scheme because he didn’t like it. Super Breakout, Berzerk, Haunted House and a number of 1981 releases also use black backgrounds, so I don’t know if this was a required policy or just an informal encouragement.

[@SoulforSale]

Mountain King had a spectacularly black background

[@Obscusion2]

@@SoulforSale Mountain King wasn't made or released by Atari, though. This apparent rule wouldn't have applied to third-party games, since Atari literally had no control over them.

[@SoulforSale]

@@Obscusion2 thank you for clarification. just like name dropping my faves y'know

[@madmax2069]

​​@@AtariArchivewell frye might not have liked the colors in pac-man arcade, that doesn't mean that they didn't also discourage the use of black backgrounds. Maybe they was receiving complaints about screen burn in and started discouraging the use of black backgrounds on non space games just before they made the VCS/2600 version of Pac-Man, and maybe then they quickly changed their minds about it after the fact?

[@TheHylianBatman]

Aw, man, Pac-Man is so fun and interesting. I'm grateful that it exists.

[@goldenphonautogram6141]

I love it

[@BeyondTheScanlines]

This was a damn interesting one to watch - especially around the framing. I can see why Atari would pull away from letting their devs go to town on variations, and it's a shame this never had them. Though admittedly, I can't help but feel there aren't many variations would could be done for it. Looking back at it, it's a satisfactory port - but it's a more complex game, and really needed that extra ROM to do it justice.

[@sandal_thong8631]

K.C. Munchkin had an option where you could make your own maps/mazes (but not save them). If he really programmed the chase-and-flee A.I. like the arcade, then homemade maps should still work.

[@HyggeState]

Here it is, the one!

[@jpbishi]

Fun fact: I was 5 when the Crash happened and didn't realize I was "supposed" to hate 2600 Pac-Man and E.T. until college. Granted I enjoyed Ms. Pac-Man more. Keep up the great work!

[@SoulforSale]

I feel you brother. E.T. was my favorite game for a long long time.

[@sandal_thong8631]

I think little kids didn't "know better" about Atari Pac-Man, compared to the arcade. But little kids not being able to get E.T. out of the pit without falling back in is what caused people to return the latter cartridge I believe. It is playable, I think I went four rounds before running out of energy the last time I played on hard. Ironically, a game called "Pitfall" would be the superior purchase for Christmas 1982.

[@KasumiKenshirou]

I liked the 2600 Pac-Man, but I got it used really cheap after the NES had come out. I would probably hated it too if I had saved up my allowance for a really long time in order to buy it. I never liked the E.T. game, though, even though I also got that used. Since it was used I probably never had the manual so I didn't know what I was supposed to do in the game.

[@allenhuffman]

Kudos for mentioning “All In Color for a Quarter.” When I discovered his blog, I spent weeks/months reading every article in it. Absolutely fascinating collection of arcade history and backstories.

[@AtariArchive]

I *really* hope he gets his book published sometime. I've got a copy of the manuscript from circa 2016 and it's a treasure trove of information. Haven't heard from Keith in a couple years now, though, so I hope he's doing well!

[@GamingTheSystems1]

I remember playing this quite a bit when it came out, but once I played Ms Pac-Man, I realized how mundane Pac-Man was. I also hated how the Pac-Man sound effects became the official sound effects of video games. When a sitcom showed someone playing a game, they would use the Pac-Man sound. This happened way into the 1990s.

[@shawncarter7188]

Yes! And it still happens sometimes lol.

[@PhillyMJS]

2600 Donkey Kong also got used for generic video game sound effects, I specifically remember a scene from Sliders in the mid 90s that had video games in the background and picked it right out.

[@sandal_thong8631]

Ha! Yeah they really overused the sounds of Atari Pac-Man in movies and shows. Since WB owned Superman they got Atari to do some of the video graphics in Super-Man III, and used those sounds!

[@sa3270]

An interesting trivia about the original arcade Pac-Man is that it includes an unused explosion sprite and unused medium dot character, which suggests they may have considered having the bonus fruit work like the mechanic used in Jr. Pac-Man. Also, the maze wall characters are filled in with a different color attribute, so they could have displayed the walls filled in with a different color, like in later games in the series, if they wanted to. It never made sense to me why Atari 2600 Pac-Man got so much hate. It became a unique but playable Pac-Man port, and there were plenty of other ports available on other systems within a year or two. I remember for my birthday in May 1982, my mom made me a Pac-Man themed cake, and she got me Pac-Man for the Atari 2600, which I had been obsessed with for a few months.

[@VintageGamingMemories]

Nice job on the background and origin. I'm glad my first experience with Pac-Man at home was in 1982 on the Atari 800 and not on the 2600 🙂

[@marvdaniels5603]

Toru Iwatani, the creator of the Pac-Man franchise, has a cameo role as a repairman at the arcade the Arcaders used to play at in the movie, 'Pixels'.

[@HeroJournalism]

Another required viewing for Atari history, loved it. Especially loved the Astrocade coverage

[@dad7275]

If you look closely the ghost colors are indeed different on Pacman 2600 (but you do have to look closely). Ive actually spent alot of time on the 2600 game through the years. I actually figured out a pattern that would keep me playing until the score flipped back to zero ( took around 2 hours or more) but I have long forgotten it.

[@anactualmotherbear]

Thank you for another great video in this series. Pac-Man is as old as I am. It's the most important game that came out during my birth year, though there were a few historically significant titles like Stratovox that also came out, Pac-Man is more important overall. I cannot underestimate how important Pac-Man is to me personally either, starting my love for video games. It was the only video game my mother ever played, and after feeling its addictive effects, she swore off video games after that. I grew up with Pac-Man being such a superstar though. For six years he was the biggest video game icon until Super Mario Bros exploded into popularity during the 1986 national launch of the NES. I coveted every kid's Pac-Man toy, bedsheets, lunch boxes, t-shirts, or other curios. I was obviously too young for the Atari VCS release of Pac-Man, not even 2 years old at the time, but it was a common game for Atari owners to have, and one I saw frequently, but rarely saw played. More people have played the ET game in later years than they have Pac-Man as there were just far better options for playing Pac-Man by the mid-80s, including Ms Pac-Man on the same system.

[@sandal_thong8631]

I suppose little kids who didn't go to the arcade much, were happy with this Atari Pac-Man (or the Coleco Arcade handheld version). I read more money was put in Pac-Man machines than tickets to see _Star Wars._ However, the latter's merchandizing was what really delivered.

[@LucasKelleher]

Including a Des Moines Register article from 1982 gets a big thumbs up from me!

[@willmistretta]

I was fine with it as a kid. It didn't replace the arcade game, but I never expected it to. Even then, I knew that the home (2600) experience wasn't "cutting edge" and enjoyed it for what it was.

[@licoricewhip]

I am way too excited that this episode is finally here. Thank you!

[@ArttuTheCat]

PAC-MAN is still a legendary classic game on the Arcades and Commodore 64 😺👍🕹️. It even looks retrospectively awesome on the Atari 2600 😺👍🕹️.

[@ecdhe]

A homebrew version was also released for the VCS, in 4K and 8K cartridge version. The 8K version is amazing and very similar to the arcade game.

[@Captureman]

Pac-Man was the game that torched my trust in Atari when I was a kid. My brother and I saved our allowances to buy that game the day it came out. I’ll never forget it. Alert: boring old man details are incoming. It was a cool overcast day in Framingham, Massachusetts as myself, my bro, mom and grandma pulled into the parking lot of Toys R Us. The time was March 1982. My 8 year old heart sank when we saw a line out the door containing other people also waiting to buy Pac-Man what with availability being on a first come first serve basis. Despite being way near the back of the line we still managed to get a ticket for a copy of the game. Well, we handed in the ticket, received the game and flipped over the box to see the graphics on the back. My brother and I froze in disbelief. All my bro could do was utter “Yuck.” as he walked away uninterested. Playing 2600 Pac-Man didn’t fare much better for either of us since the gameplay mechanics, sounds and visuals were nothing like the arcade game. I have an appreciation for 2600 Pac-Man’s quirks these days and I have long since learned to enjoy it for what it is. Yet the 8 year old Pac-Man fanatic that I was in 1982 was a crestfallen little dude when Atari mishandled one of the biggest video games of all time up until that point. All was well though. I had food on the table, clothes on my back and a loving albiet extremely dysfunctional family. Things could have been way worse. A subpar Pac-Man adaptation wasn’t that big of a deal….. But COME ON ATARI!! You had one shot at making a good Pac-Man conversion and you blew it!! There. I’m better now.

[@sandal_thong8631]

It was the first strike, against Atari, I think, in consumer's minds. Considering Ms. Pac-Man sold 2 million in 1983, I think if Pac-Man had been the same quality, then it might have sold at least 2 million more.

[@KasumiKenshirou]

I got this game for probably $1 or less at Goodwill, so I guess that explains why I didn't hate this game like so many others did.

[@Captureman]

@@KasumiKenshirou Nice. The pain would have certainly been less had my brother and I spent a buck on 2600 Pac-Man vs the $35 or so dollars we forked over. Just to clarify, I didn’t hate 2600 Pac-Man but I was really, REALLY disappointed that the game took the liberties it did with the audio, video and play mechanics. It felt like Pac-Man in the most basic sense in that you were a yellow head trapped in a maze eating things and running from monsters. That’s where the similarities to the arcade version end.

[@shawncarter7188]

Thank you for the video ❤

[@cakebrickyard]

the one we've been waiting for :)

[@danielespeziari5545]

It was a pleasure to watch, as always!

[@KasumiKenshirou]

4:38 There is a very clear connection between Mr. Mouth and Pac-Man. Mr. Mouth is just the name it was given when brought to America. In Japan it was called パックマンゲーム (Pac-Man Game). (FYI, both "Pac-Man" and "Puck-Man" are written and pronounced the same way in Japanese: "pakku man", so the name change of the arcade game is only a change to how it was written out in English.) Tomy's Mr. Mouth was based on a line of popular coin banks, where you would put a coin in the character's plastic hand, push down on it, and then it would toss it into it's mouth. Tomy and Namco must've had some kind of arrangement, as Tomy released some of these banks as tie-ins to the Pac-Man video game in the US, and this version's head looked IDENTICAL to the center of the Mr. Mouth game shown in the video. Tomy released other Pac-Man merchandise, too. The logo they used on this merchandise would use a Mr. Mouth shaped "C".

[@AtariArchive]

It's very possible, but there's nothing really conclusive since the legal issue wasn't settled in the courtroom. "Pakku" is a pretty common onomatopoeia in Japanese and they've been attaching "-man" to the end of names for decades as a naming function, so I think it's just as likely that they both came to the name naturally. Tomy getting the license to sell Pac-Man merch does feel like Namco recognizing that Tomy probably could make their case successfully.

[@goldenphonautogram6141]

I have been waiting so long for this one

[@Mrjacharles]

Man I've never seen Pac-Man get as retro as he does in Atari. ^.^

[@rickreynolds1969]

Very cool video! Thanks for sourcing Intellivision information from the Intellivisionaries and giving us credit!! 😄

[@AtariArchive]

Thank you for your great interviews! They’ve saved me a lot of energy and time trying to track down people myself to ask the same questions you already did.

[@richardadams4928]

I played the heck outta KC Munchkin back in the day, it was GREAT.

[@wadmodderschalton5763]

The Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man looks more like a low-budget fan game, rather than a true port.

[@DavidRomigJr]

I’ve seen Frye talk about Atari 2600 Pac-Man. The console market being new, there wasn’t a standard way to do things. It was easier to put the passageway vertically and he didn’t realize there’d be such a backlash about it. The background was blue because Atari didn’t allow black backgrounds for non-space games. He said if he knew what he knew now in hindsight, he would have ignored it and gone with a black background. As the Atari only has a two 8-bit sprites, he was working on a rotating sprite flicker algorithm to highly curb the flicker, but didn’t have time to finish it. He was overall still happy with it. He even got mail from one kid that was disappointed that the arcade version wasn’t more like the Atari 2600 version. There’s a video online of him getting to play the recent hobbyist version that very faithfully recreated the original arcade game and he was very impressed. And on a different note, when the New Mexico landfill was finally excavated, tons of unsold Pac-Man cartridges were found, which seems to imply that Atari did simply just make too many of them as they had such a huge backlog that they threw out. Make of what you will with that information. Anyway, I enjoyed the video. The more information about games, the better!

[@AtariArchive]

I know Frye's talked about Pac-Man a lot, but there are quite a few details that don't match up between tellings, so his story has shifted over time. He *is* the only person I've talked to or seen interviews with mention this supposed Atari color policy, so I kind of think it was probably a suggestion (owing to the fact that color TVs were becoming much more commonplace circa 1982) than anything hard and fast that he needed to follow. His older interview with Goldberg and Vendel explicitly states he chose the color scheme he did because he didn't like the one used in the arcade game, so I feel that's probably closest to the truth. Re: the landfill, it was also full of games that are considered very good, such as Defender, Berzerk, and Missile Command. So I don't think the quality of Pac-Man had anything to do with it, nor is there any evidence that they actually overproduced the game from talking with former Atari staff, reading contemporary reports, and seeing what bits of paperwork are out there. What Atari did have was difficulty tracking and fulfilling orders from distributors and retailers after Space Invaders blew up, and in late 1982 into 1983 that came home to roost as retailers, used to only receiving half of their orders, over-ordered and actually got the quantities they asked for. Suddenly everyone had too much stock to get out of their warehouses and shelves and Atari, in 1983, had to come up with a return policy to help mollify the situation. Hence why they had a warehouse full of stock that they decided to write off and destroy.

[@sandal_thong8631]

@@AtariArchive I'd also heard the story of Atari making more (or as many) carts (usually _Pac-Man)_ as there were consoles sold. It would be interesting if someone in the know could tell how many they manufactured versus how many sold. Certainly they must have had a lot of unsold cartridges of all sorts to send them to a landfill! How did that happen? I didn't see any new catalogs after the ones with _Pac-Man, Berzerk_ and _Star Raiders_ in 1982. Why wouldn't they have put out catalogs with their games in 1982 to advertise _Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Swordquest Earthworld, RealSports Volleyball, Football_ and _Baseball,_ followed by their 33 1983 games? What a strange decision! I have a feeling that they stopped making catalogs due to too many unsold _Pac-Man_ games in 1982, so they just took them out of the boxes and put them in the new games to save a few cents.

[@steveafulton]

Very nice work.

[@MikeDijital]

A year ago I bought this game just to have on a shelf. I have a soft spot for the game. Then I wanted to play it so I bought a 2600Jr... Then I modded the Jr for AV out... then I got a retron77 ... and a year later I own70% of the north american 2600 library of games... all because of the pacman 2600 version looking back at me all lonely from the toy display shelf lol

[@sandal_thong8631]

I think it worth mentioning the flicker, since so many people object to that. I'm told they designated all enemies as player-2's sprite (there's not 2 Pac-Men on the screen at the same time), jumping between them, and when there's more than 3 on the screen the flicker is noticeable (like in Superman, and Adventure). I think _Mousetrap_ solved that by only having 3 cats to chase your dot-eating mouse, so no flicker, same with Alien. Ms. Pac-Man, as he may have said, solved it by doing some tricky programming except when all 4 ghosts are on the same row. I think Berzerk used that same solution but made sure that no two robots were on the same horizontal; they stop moving before that happens. Perhaps Lock 'N' Chase made sure more than two weren't on the same row at a time. Dark Cavern has 6 enemies on the screen, but I haven't monitored it to see if more than 3 enemies are on the same row at the same time, and if so whether there's flicker. I saw _Wizard of Wor_ could have 6 enemies simultaneously and it got pretty bad, so they should have learned some tricks. What I wonder is if they could have alternated some enemy sprites with player 1's sprite? If so, maybe you could have 5 enemies on the same screen and row without flicker (2 for player-1, 3 for player-2)?

[@sandal_thong8631]

I'd like to see more about solving the flicker problem when some of these games come up in the future.

[@mikemayberry7121]

I actually really like this version of Pac-Man, but that might just be the nostalgia talking. Great video!!!

[@SoulforSale]

These sounds bring back the memories

[@adamking6645]

This one is actually a tough call. On one hand, does this cart really deserved the criticism it received, since this was the first home version of Pac-Man and maybe people's expectations were just too high. Maybe this was the best Frye could do on the VCS, and it's not like there were any other conversions to compare it to. Then again you look at the home port of Ms. Pac-Man and Jr. Pac-Man, two conversions that do an excellent job of emulation their coin-op parents, and it makes you wonder if they could have done better.

[@madmax2069]

I mean it does, but at the same time it doesn't. We can use hindsight and say this and that about it, but you really have to look at it from the mindset of back in the day when things wasn't really set in stone,. There was just a lot of unknowns back then, there really wasn't what we have today when it comes to game development back then. Frye just didn't realize what really made Pac-Man Pac-man, I mean it's Pac-Man, but it's not arcade Pac-Man which is what people really wanted, but to many it was good enough. They themselves didn't fully understand the hardware in what it could and couldn't do, I mean how could they, everything was just getting started. And while they was very skilled programmers (for back in the day) there's a lot they didn't know, especially for game development. Heck just look at what some of the homebrewers today can achieve on the VCS/2600, I don't think any one of them back then could achieve what could be achieved today with the same hardware. There a lot of that due to better software to do your development on, much better hardware and such. There was also limits they had to work within vs today. They definitely could have done a better job with VCS/2600 Pac-man, just look at the 4k homebrew version of Pac-Man, but again that's working with modern understanding vs the mindset and understanding from back then.

[@sandal_thong8631]

Pac-Man Fever was rampant and people would buy anything with Pac-Man, like the Coleco Arcade handheld game which was primitive. Atari started 1982 with 10 million Atari VCS/2600/Sears consoles sold (70% market share of consoles?) and sold another 2-5 million consoles by the end of the year, probably due to Pac-Man. Atari missed the opportunity to only release Pac-Man with the launch of their new 5200 system (and with Atari computers which were the same tech-level). If they had sold 2-5 million computers and/or the 5200, maybe the crash of 1983 wouldn't have happened? Of course it started when Atari late in 1982 released an announcement saying their profits wouldn't be increasing by 50% but by 15%. The next question that needs answering is why did that happen? Maybe we'll see it in the next episode as people really started buying Activision games in 1982?

[@Heike--]

They COULD have done better! This 2600 version was an early alpha that they shoved out the door. It wasn't finished. Everyone said it was crap, even for a 2600 game. And they were right.

[@madmax2069]

@@Heike-- I've heard multiple different stories about that. Some saying it was an alpha, and some saying it wasn't. I mean did Frye say it was an alpha?

[@Hologhoul]

@@Heike-- No, it wasn't 'crap'. Read up on how complex it was to develop on the VCS, and consider the hours poured into it.

[@donnierussellii4659]

This was my first home video game, and I believe it was a pack-in with the system. I bothered me even as a kid how it seemed so needlessly different from the arcade.

[@robertskitch]

Am I wrong in believing that the VCS colour choice was done to help prevent phosphor burn in with a black background being generally reserved for space games?

[@madmax2069]

Frye said Atari had a restriction that only certain games could have a black background just for that reason. From what Frye said is that back backgrounds was limited to space type games and the like. And the color changing background when a game is idle was also to prevent burn in. But I don't know about the sprite colors being limited to certain colors to prevent burn in, I don't think it would have mattered to much on the sprite colors as long as the sprites was on a bright background.

[@exidy-yt]

It's hard to understate just how disappointing this was to us as kids back in the day, especially when the fantastic Ms. Pac Man came out not much more then a year later. Frye really screwed the pooch. It was beyond terrible and was really far more responsible for 'the crash' then E.T. was. All my friends were let down, and within a year were looking at Atari's 8-bit computers and eventually the Commodore 64 which was my love until the end of high school when I upgraded to the Amiga 500 and eventually a 386 PC by the time I got married.

[@Toad64]

Thanks for the great research, this was a great video! Interesting to see how well the game actually sold, and that reviews were kind of on either side on whether it was good or not. I was really little when this came out, so I played it and enjoyed it and didn't really consider that it was so different from the arcade, it was just Pac-Man, and i liked it well enough.

[@lilmissdangerous2267]

Still my favorite game on Atari besides Pitfall and Jungle Hunt.

[@donkeyparadise9276]

Great content

[@metronome8471]

Atari from what I understand didn't have many VCS programmers due to many leaving. Part of a programmers employment stated that in order to work on 400/800 projects a programmer also had to work on a VCS title. Until GCC was tasked with VCS titles ,Atari VCS inhouse developers were basically a skeleton crew.

[@sandal_thong8631]

There seems to be an attitude in business "If you were worth a [dime], you wouldn't be working for me" which seems to apply at Atari. Almost all those guys (and gals) making games that sold over a million copies got the shaft. I read they went to third-party programmers to make some of their games for the 5200 and in 1983 for the 2600.

[@vidarlystadjohansen9829]

awesome channel!

[@ZagnutBar]

What Tod Frye missed, and what he still doesn't seem to understand in modern talks he's given, was that his adaptation stripped all the charm and personality out of Pac Man. People loved arcade Pac Man as much for the maze munching as for the colors and cute characters. Look at the way pac man brought in a female demographic; Space invaders couldn't do that. Space Invaders didn't lean on any charming personality as core element of what made it enjoyable. It was fun mostly because of the action, and this translated really well to the VCS. It's a really good game on VCS and is fun to play, even today in 2023.

[@harlockmbb]

Pacman 8k homebrew is amazing.

[@marklechman2225]

Tod cut so many corners he dropped the second “d” from his own name.😂

[@Phediuk]

Outstanding work once again; you have a real talent for digging up long-forgotten sources. Also, correct me if I'm wrong,, but I'm pretty sure the "Pac-Man Day" (April 3, 1982) advertised at kzbin.info/www/bejne/pqDTYnhoec6XjLM is the first time a video game's release was marketed around a specific date.

[@JeffKart]

waka waka waka ... memories ... didn't the Atari 2600 version give you a new guy for every level you cleared?

[@AtariArchive]

Ohhh yes, makes the game a bit too easy to me!

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

Pac man ...sorry- "puc"man (going by Japanese original name, only changed through fear of vandals changing the 'P' to an 'F' over here,) was my first game I ever played till aged 8. I had no idea of the arcade till many years later - so pac man on vcs WAS pac man too me... till I learned all about its development etc.

[@Asterra2]

I consider the VCS Pac-Man's bizarre design to be the product of a pot-addled mind. Every time I hear that 4-note opening "tune", with discordances so persistent that you could excuse it for being Schoenberg-inspired, this is the thought that springs to mind. How else do you end up with such a bizarre, dissonant tune, which bears absolutely no resemblance to music, let alone the original Pac-Man music? How else do you end up with a Pac-Man that has a distended lower jaw? Why give him an eye? Why is the maze literally just a series of cubicles, with even less variety than Head-On? Why is Pac-Man's death animation so _weird_ and why did he give it twice as many animation frames as the arcade original? Didn't that waste ROM?

[@sandal_thong8631]

Requiring one guy to build the game and the music seems fishy or risky. Couldn't they have had a sound and music guy to make the rounds? I'm told Moon Patrol was outsourced and its graphics and music rocks! Also, how much playtesting did Pac-Man get? I suspect very little for E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial when we get to that. I only bought/got three 3rd-party games for Atari in 1981-3: Pitfall! and two M-Network games (that I didn't realize were Intellivision ports!), possibly because of Atari's good name then.

[@Asterra2]

@@sandal_thong8631 Oh there are easy answers to that. For starters, to make a game back then, first and foremost you needed to be an engineer. Somebody good at game design, music, graphics? _Very_ secondary and almost irrelevant for such a primitive platform. Furthermore, almost without exception, every Atari VCS game ever made was arranged by single individuals. It's just how things worked. No doubt the necessity of programming everything in ASM or machine language did not lend itself well to a group effort even if that had been meaningfully on the table.

[@sa3270]

I always thought that tune sounded like something you hear when you dial the wrong number.

[@drno-xc1yt]

I just got a 2600+, and so I've been revisiting the 2600 catalog. The port of Pac-Man is by no means great, but it's not exactly unplayable, and as this video points out, it certainly did not crash the whole video game industry. 2600 Pac-Man does look bad by comparison with the ports of Ms. Pac-Man and Jr. Pac-Man, but those are remarkably good home adaptations considering the very limited hardware.

[@sandal_thong8631]

Pardon me for getting "meta," but I think if you had done episodes in order of cartridge sales, (so this would be first), then the channel would have found more viewers and sooner. Now that people looking for Atari Pac-Man might find this, they can then look at other episodes. Good luck! I do like those episodes since I had many of the pre-1982 games by Atari, played many of them and got some used later. This also could have been an opportunity to feature some Pac-Man knockoffs besides Lock-n-Chase, such as Mousetrap and Alien. Do they really need their own episodes? Or can they be combined?

[@AtariArchive]

I went into this series recognizing that most of the games people actually remember and care about are from 1982-83, which is fine. Going chronologically has done a lot to help inform my understanding of the home video game space at the time and see connections over time that are otherwise hard to suss out. I'll be continuing with that approach, so Mouse Trap, Lock n Chase, Alien, Jawbreaker, etc. will all get their time to shine in this series (in theory, anyway) even though I don't think any of them quite earn a solo ep like Pac-Man does.

[@sandal_thong8631]

@@AtariArchive Thanks for the reply. Hope you didn't get discouraged. Or if you did, you now have your second wind to press on through the banner year of 1982 for Atari and 3rd party developers.

[@absolutezeronow7928]

Well, this was one of the big ones, and it's another great and informative video. I can't really hate the VCS version of Pac-Man even though I do prefer the NES version. Fyre making it 2-player was an interesting choice and I like that Fyre stuck by his artistic choices and probably would have done technical fixes if given more time.

[@smokinhalf]

Before pac man was pack in game (pun intended) my parents bought a voucher that they had payed for the cartridge( $40 and when it came out we got first dibs)

[@Heike--]

This is the most underrated channel on KZbin. It deserves 250k subscribers, dammit.

[@sandal_thong8631]

"Underrated" is the most overused word in comment on KZbin. It's usually false, and never defines who the raters are. Please retire it.

[@Heike--]

No. This channel is underrated.@@sandal_thong8631

[@KeithFroehlich07]

The biggest home video game ripoff in history. They were waiting lists in every store in Pittsburgh waiting for this game. We had a copy waiting for us because a friend of mine's mother worked at Hills and I called her from school to let her know. And she went and got it. 5 minutes after we took it out of the box we were like what the hell?

[@sandal_thong8631]

Sorry you felt that way, I don't know when I felt disappointment. I remember playing it a lot, since Pac-Man Fever was a thing, but once I got tired of it, haven't gone back. Even the Coleco Home Arcade handheld game was in demand for Pac-Man though it was pretty primitive.

[@sandal_thong8631]

Atari 1982 blue Logbook challenge: play game 6 with difficulty on B. Pro (Yum-Yum) 2,000 Master (Healthy Appetite) 5,000 Wizard (Leader of the Pac) 10,000 I think I made Master a month after I got the logbook, since earliest entries had a June 1982 date. I wrote I made Wizard in February 1983, same day I did for Haunted House, perhaps just when I got my Atari back from being fixed. I didn't write down a high score, and haven't been interested in revisiting it to try.

[@Mrshoujo]

Some design choices Frye said were determined by higher ups and marketing. The blue background was stipulated due to some stupid edict that only space games have black backgrounds. And marketing told Frye to have a 2 player option which he didn't really want to put in.

[@AtariArchive]

Frye's been pretty adamant that both the color scheme and the choice to have a two player mode were his own. My experiences talking with the folks on the marketing side of things is that they weren't particularly hands-on with the game designers. No other designer I've talked to has ever mentioned there being an edict about black backgrounds only being for space games so I take that one with a grain of salt, as well.

[@sandal_thong8631]

@@AtariArchive Thanks for clearing that up; I'd read that one too. Someone else said changing colors, like when the game ends, might be a "screen-saver" mode for TVs.

[@AtariArchive]

Yep, that was the reasoning behind Atari doing those in their games going way back to 1977. It also takes very little ROM space to just randomly cycle colors, so it's a pretty easy approach to the issue.

[@DTM-Books]

This videogame is half the reason why my generation (Gen X) is so famously grouchy and cynical. I’m still feeling upset about this lemon every now and then. I will also add that “Pac-Man Day” really was a big deal. The release of the game on 2600 was the top news story in Duluth, Minnesota that day. I’m not sure if that was the case nationwide or only in smaller markets. The Atari 8-but version, meanwhile, was fantastic for its time and I loved playing it for many years. I think Datasoft also released a disk version, but I can’t remember if it’s the same as the cartridge version or the 5200 version with Intermissions.

[@johneygd]

Well i tout that 12 million copies of vcs pac man were sold from wich 5 million were returned,but if there are no official returning documents of it then we will never know, Also it’s clear that atari didn’t had learn from their hasty porting mistake as later that year they released ET wich not only was bad but it formed the final nail in the cockpit to atari ,wich caused a chain reaction of a implosion to not only atari but to other companies as there were already so many bad games on the market wich leaded to the video game crash of 1983,, Now i wish you did showed the 8k version of a homebrew vcs version of pacman because it really shows what the vcs is really capable off with all programming tricks & hardware expansion chips,now if atari wasn’t that greedy and eager about saving and making money,then they could,ve make the vcs version of pac man much much better, This extreme saving trade off costs practice from atari are well known on other systems such as making labels only B&W or only slap a cheap ass boring title on the cartride and don’t bother to even slap a picture of a game on it etc,,,

[@AtariArchive]

I've never seen anything contemporary or from former Atari staff indicating that they produced 12 million copies and had 5 million returns. Between the net sales memo and the game being packed in with the console in 1983, there's no reason to think they overproduced Pac-Man to any appreciable amount compared to anything else they were trying to sell at the time. Re: ET, it actually came out *after* the quarterly report that showed Atari had lost gobs of money in the fall of 1982, and everyone in the game industry knew that a shakeout was looming by mid-82 already. It may not be a particularly great game, and both it and Raiders of the Lost Ark were ultimately flops, but that had little to do with the market crash. I plan on delving into the contemporary reporting as the months go by for 1982 to show everything coming together for the crash, and how it wasn't the fault of a couple games but rather a systemic failure, primarily on Atari's part.

[@sandal_thong8631]

@@AtariArchive Funny how games that may have sold over 1 million and 2 million could be considered flops. I read Donkey Kong for Atari was a must-have game that sold over 4 million! Disappointments to many customers probably, and I look forward to you discussing returns in a future video. I think Imagic also allowed returns but might not have had new games customers and retailers wanted in 1983 (though they released ~10). As to Pac-Man being packed with the console, wouldn't that be a sign that they over-produced and had plenty of carts (1-2 million) to unload? Would those consoles be included in the 8 million figure of Pac-Man carts sold, or wouldn't they? I forget whether Space Invaders (which supposedly sold over 6 million) was ever packed with the Atari; maybe the Sears version?

[@AtariArchive]

I suspect they didn't include the pack-ins with the figures on the memo if only because Combat isn't the number one seller on the list! Alex Smith with They Create Worlds has data that suggests Atari sold around 3 million 2600s in 1983, which would mostly have Pac-Man with em. I don't think Space Invaders was ever packed in (which is kind of surprising, honestly)

[@d.vaughn8990]

The ‘Ghosts’ aren’t actually ghosts…They are ‘Monsters’!😮 Atari labeled Pac-Man’s pursuers, as ghosts, and the name stuck!

[@AtariArchive]

It's true that Atari stuck to "ghosts" though if you delve into interviews and documentation, not only was Midway referring to them as "ghost monsters" on the original English sales flyer for Pac-Man (while calling them monsters on the cabinet) even Iwatani has called them "ghost shaped monsters" and "ghosts" in interviews. Gotta love it when the history gets messy!

[@d.vaughn8990]

@@AtariArchive Nice info 👍. I know more than my fair share of factual, provable, video game history. But, I never knew this tid bit!

[@licoricewhip]

You mean that Atari assigned a guy ON PROBATION to create what may be their most-important port?

[@AtariArchive]

Well, not legal probation, just employment probation (to hear Frye tell it).

[@licoricewhip]

@@AtariArchive When I've been on employment probation, my bosses haven't given me any crucial project! Guess they felt that Frye would be more motivated than others to make a quality game. The game plays fine, but so many of us were disappointed to see the layout of it for the first time. I wonder if Atari could've just turned the arcade layout on its side for this port.

[@sandal_thong8631]

@@licoricewhip I was thinking the same thing, which would make the tunnels being on the top and bottom a good thing. Isn't there a version that's turned 90 degrees? Funny how TVs at home are landscape, but in the arcade they are portrait. I saw one portrait monitor like that for a Mac in college, but I guess it didn't catch on for word-processing.

[@dodoguy]

my guilty pleasure, playing the worst port of pacman because i think it looks funny

[@marvdaniels5603]

Agreed.

[@sandal_thong8631]

Probably the Coleco Arcade handheld was one of the worst official ports of Pac-Man. But kids played them because of Pac-Man Fever (and later Donkey-Kong Fever).

[@marvdaniels5603]

@@sandal_thong8631 Absolutely! The power of brand marketing. Absolutely.

[@bryanjensen2614]

Funny how Pac-Man was such a turd and years later someone programmed a version that would have saved the 2600.

[@AtariArchive]

they had that back in the day, it's called Ms. Pac-Man

[@sa3270]

It was fine for the time. And I think they redeemed themselves with Ms. Pac-Man.

[@waltkowalski9040]

​@@AtariArchivePac-Man and ET sunk the market, Ms PacMan was too little, too late....there was an independent programmer later who did a version of Pacman that had that version been launched instead of the shit show we know of the industry might have been saved.

[@waltkowalski9040]

@@sa3270BS it was fine for the time. People were pissed, they demanded refunds and the industry crapped out shortly after. You know nothing of VG history you obviously didn't live it.

[@waltkowalski9040]

He's 100% correct look up Atari 2600 pacman homebrew.

[@type4647]

Horrible game that led to the downfall of atari

[@mcbfilms22]

It seems like Pac-Man was the beginning of the end for Atari, and then E.T. solidified it

[@madmax2069]

It was due to all the horrible shovelware games (adult games, clones, renames of the same game, and companies making games that had absolutely nothing to do about games and the like) that caused everything. But it was so much more than that, you also had many companies trying to get a piece of the pie Atari was eating and flooded the market.

[@AtariArchive]

I have plans to start including a regular “Crash Watch” segment every so often in these videos. Everyone knew a shakeout was coming months early because of how overheated the video game space had become - they just didn’t realize how bad the problem was with Atari itself (which had a massive chunk of the market percentage alone).

[@sandal_thong8631]

@@AtariArchive Thanks. I'll look forward to that.

[@sandal_thong8631]

@@madmax2069 Considering "good" third-party games from Activision, Imagic and Parker Bros. sold over a million copies, I doubt that cheesy games hardly anyone bought could have upset the public, regardless of how retailers with stock they couldn't move felt.

[@sandal_thong8631]

Besides Pac-Man and E.T. (and Raiders which sold a million, I'm told), I remembered today that another disappointment was Donkey Kong for Atari (which may have sold over 4 million, making it the number 3 Atari game). It was a must-have game in 1982 that helped sell 2 million ColecoVisions and some Coleco Arcade handhelds. It was fun playing for a few minutes or half-an-hour at a friend's home but a disappointment for people who bought it so could play it as much as they wanted. I disagree with those who say Coleco deliberately made it lousy on a 4K ROM (Pac-Man's was a 4K ROM) instead of 8K in order to sell more ColecoVisions. So, I think these 4 destroyed consumers' confidence, while games no one bought destroyed retailer's confidence.

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

It's the lack of charm that really hurts it. Sure, it gains some back after it becomes a weird alternative take, instead of your only choice... But the color scheme is an ugly holiday sweater thrown over faded pastels too shy to stand up for themselves. It's a better representation of why Dona Baily's contributions to Centipede were important, and gave the machine credibility with people who have eyes - a demographic Atari would struggle to reach in the years ahead. Also, the sound wants to be as abrasive and mechanical as possible...how does THAT fit the license? Is he trying to live down to STEM major stereotype?

[@sandal_thong8631]

One point made was that programmers did it alone. If he had a sound guy to capture and translate the sounds from the Arcade... who knows?

[@koneill123]

I wasn't a fan. Pacman didn't face up or down and the sound was downright unpleasant.

[@madmax2069]

As a kid back then, none of that bothered me, still played it, still enjoyed it.

[@sandal_thong8631]

At 11 it was disappointing but I played it for hours due to Pac-Man Fever. For younger kids who never or rarely went to the arcade, they probably ate it up, not knowing any better. Not sure what age this would have resulted in a return. Maybe if you bought it in 1983 when Ms. Pac-Man was released, and were a teenager, you'd take it back to exchange for the latter?

[@ricks.1779]

I was 11 years old at the time, and couldn't wait for Atari Pac Man to come out. When it was finally released, it was very hard to obtain. Once I finally got it, I was super disappointed. I thought it was horrible.

[@sandal_thong8631]

Same here as I turned 11 in spring of 1982. Still, I played it quite a bit due to Pac-Man Fever. If the Coleco Arcade hadn't been lost in the mail, I might have played that one too (I assume it was Pac-Man, but could have been Frogger or Donkey Kong).

[@ricks.1779]

@@sandal_thong8631 yes! I played it a lot too. I was bothered that Pac Man never faced up or down, even when he was moving up or down. The maze was terrible, the sound was annoying and the "wafers" (dots), being oblong. It was all so bad, that it just made me want to go to the arcade to play the real thing.

[@sandal_thong8631]

@@ricks.1779 I sometimes think they should have had a "give it to your little brother" campaign regarding the 2600 for selling the 5200 (or ColecoVision) to older kids, as little kids didn't know the difference, because they didn't play arcade games.

[@TheGroovySideOftheTube]

A great episode...it's true that Atari game players were more forgiving of these conversions - PacMan on the Atari VCS looked amazing to me when I was 10 years old - I couldn't believe I could play such a game on a home television set! It seemed so colorful and sophisticated. I didn't care that it was visually and audibly nothing like the original arcade version!