8k Atari Pac-Man

I neither liked nor disliked 2600 Pac-Man at first. I was only slightly disappointed when I played it, if even that. Only slightly. I never really played the arcade version much, it was far too difficult for me, too fast. And I could only maybe make it to level 2 or 3 if I was lucky and having a good day. The overly difficult arcade iteration, made me dislike the Pac-Man franchise. In fact many arcade games were too difficult and I felt ripped off when I was done at the end of a $20 gaming session. Thank god for the children's variations in some game cartridges.

I was not upset at all, because I *knew* the 2600 didn't have this mongo circuit board with hundreds of chips to do awesome graphics. The VCS had to make do with 5 chips, and that's it! So to me, the home version is what it was.

As time wore on, the hours turned into days and the days into weeks. I began to actively dis-like it. Not for any one concrete reason or anything. Just all the negative press generated by magazines really put the hurt on.

Today, in retrospect it is what it is. It is also important to consider that since the days when 2600 Pac-Man was released; VCS programming has advanced by leaps and bounds. Just look at the homebrews we have going - Boulderdash, BallBlazer(wip) and StarCastle(wip), among tens of others! Look at all the fine new games out.

Besides we know the 2600 can do an acceptable version of Pac-Man anyways thanks to Nukey and the homebrew scene. Not to mention the fantastic tools we have today, the PC as a development platform, the Stella emulator for testing. And what about the other supporting tools used in writing and managing code?

WOW! What a great time to be a part of the hobby eh??