10. 500 Words on Pac-Man, somehow.
In reviewing the Kung Fu Flash cart in our last episode, I tested with the Pac-Man rom image (by Atarisoft/Thunder Mountain, 1983 - I know there has to be other versions out there and would prefer not to confuse you all from the get-go). The overlap between those that have played a video game and those that haven't played Pac-Man has to be pretty small, but I had enough fun playing this game to give it a quick review and a mild recommendation.
The idea of an "arcade-perfect" home port was an exceedingly rare feat in 1983 for any game that wasn't Pong, and this selection is nowhere near an exception to the rule. Gone are the mid-game cutscenes, bright, crisp color palette, and pieces of fruit that you can actually recognize. It honestly does look better than more ambitious "swing and miss" C64 arcade ports by nature of its inherent simplicity, but it's still bound to the hardware on which it runs.
Though I'd go so far as to say that the game's graphics don't even look quite as nice as later Commdore-spec efforts like Ms. Pac Man, I'd still place it in the top 50% of 8-bit Pac-Man ports overall. It's clearly a quantum leap beyond abysmal previous-gen efforts for consoles such as the Atari 2600, but notably pales in comparison to the Colecovision port by Atarisoft. The Atari 5200 port is probably the closest comparison one could make with its relatively smaller, ill-developed ghosts and "square", horizontally stretched feel (a product of formatting the game for lower-res landscape-oriented screens as opposed to the design of the original arcade game).
In another similarity to most home arcade conversions, the game is unquestionably less difficult than its coin-op counterpart. The action is a tad slower in general, with considerably more time needed for Pac-Man to traverse the length of the screen horizontally. There were far fewer desperate scrambles from ghosts, and many more situations of baiting them toward me to maximize the return of a nearby power pill. Most of my deaths either came from getting boxed in between two ghosts (an inevitable moment in any Pac-Man game), or by misjudging my distance from the ghost or overestimating my ability to get away. Note that the controls are good, but not perfect - reversing direction "on a dime" unfortunately seems to have a slight, frustrating delay vs. the original and is a difficult adjustment if you've played the arcade/modern ports more frequently.
This version of Pac-Man does thankfully support a 2-player mode, and it's usually not too difficult to find a friend willing to pick up the second joystick and take part in the game's simple, addictive gameplay and short play sessions.
This leaves us with a great, but bare-bones game whose appeal lies entirely on if it leaves you chasing that next 100 points or finishing one level higher than your previous try. Luckily for Pac-Man.. it's Pac-Man. The gameplay dynamics are simple and satisfying, and I found myself taking way more turns per session than I expected. Decades on, the original arcade version of this game is still one of the most addictive wonders of code ever committed to silicon.
Pac-Man is an easy find in both diskette and cartridge form If you like the game as much as I do and want to try beating my high score, check out our new High Scores page and submit a screenshot to earn your spot in Hank's hall of fame!
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