One of two games that not only helped to kill a company, but crashed an industry. Pac-Man, after a ton of hype, released to home consoles and epitomized the term "disappointing".
Back in the late 70’s, arcades were associated with smoky bars and bowling alleys where drunk guys would test their mettle and settle scores through games of Pong, of course I wasn’t of age then but that’s how I think it happened. As the shoulder pads and big hair of the 80’s approached, arcades moved out of the dives and into dedicated buildings where entire families would go to relieve the stress of their mundane lives. It’s safe to say that Pac-Man was one of the main reasons for this change. Not only was Pac-Man the most popular arcade game of the time (and eventually, of all time), but he became an American icon of sorts. Soon, America’s big yellow orb was gracing magazine covers, toys, lunch boxes, Saturday morning cartoons, and a little song called Pac-Man Fever was #9 on the Billboard. Pac-Man was the poster boy, not just for arcades, but also for video games in general. Although like every well-known celebrity, Pac-Man has skeletons in his closet. No matter how much he slipped up, nothing will ever beat what happened one dark holiday season back in 1982.
Pac-Man was insanely popular in the arcades and was in the midst of munching his way into the hearts of kids, adults, and gamers everywhere. Of course, there comes a time in every game mascot’s life where they have to start thinking of bringing their antics home. Enter 80’s gaming juggernaut Atari, whose 2600 system was pretty much the only real game in town…no pun intended. A deal was struck to develop and publish Pac-Man on the 2600 machine just in time for Christmas 1982. This proverbial deal with the devil would end up being a huuuuuuge mistake for everyone involved. Despite the warning signs and with a thundering “ballyhoo!” the hype train pulled out of the station, picking up everyone in its way. The biggest arcade game of all time was finally coming home.
Of course, I’d assume the children and adults who received the game that fateful holiday experienced exhilarating highs followed by crushing lows, otherwise, we wouldn’t be talking about it here would we? So now that we have the back-story out of the way, let’s take a look at a side-by-side comparison of the two games, shall we?
The 2600 bastardizaton...
This is more like it.
Do my eyes deceive me? I can barely tell the difference! Seriously, though, what in the hell is this? Pac-Man can best be described as an exhibition of flicker and wangs. The ghosts that chase after you flicker off and on as good ghosts should and also helps in making them almost invisible at times. The dots that Pac-Man munches have been reduced to brown lines…that look like wangs is you look hard enough. This game could have easily been repackaged as “Super Wang Muncher” or even “German Scat Eater” and packaged along with Custer’s Revenge in some sort of his and her racism and fetish two-pack (thanks Amerrykan!). Now there’s a license to print money.
Fruit....or something more naughty?
The control was awful and the hit detection was pretty poor, you’d die if you got seemingly within an inch of a ghost. They couldn’t even get the scoring right. Each “dot” scored one point; the fruit would score 100 points no matter what level you were on, and points for eating ghosts never multiplied if you chained them up. This obviously wasn’t the arcade experience. Ghosts, controls, scoring, and general kinkiness aside, the developers even managed to mangle the star character in the process. Gone is the yellow, faceless disc we all loved. I can stand for Inky and maybe Clyde getting the shaft, but screwing Pac-Man up is going too far. In his place, you have this thing with the dome of a frog and the folded double chin of a Frenchman. Let’s face facts here, Pac-Man is a very circle-based game. You’ve got dots, you’ve got power pellets, you’ve got your circular Pac-Man, hell, even the ghosts are roundish! None of that proves true here; it’s as if the developers went out of their way to make this blockier than other 2600 games... and that’s pretty damn blocky. To make matters worse, the animation was pretty damn shoddy too. Pac-Man only would only look to the left or right, he wouldn't even point up or down. Sure, the arcade game may seem arcane by today's standards, but this version of Pac-Man makes the arcade game look like Unreal Tournament 2007 in comparison.
Looking at the screenshots, what you see is undeniably, what you get. The maze never changes and it would have been nice if it even remotely resembled the maze in the arcade game. By the by, have you seen what they use for fruit? Gone are the cherries, strawberries, keys, and pretz... er…cookies that we grew accustomed to. Those trivial things have been replaced with, well, it’s either a pie or a bleached asshole. Take your pick.
Sound-wise, this game is a mess. You won’t get the iconic start music when the game begins. You don’t get the totally cool “wakka-wakka” sounds. You won’t even get an accurate sound effect when you eat that bastardized fruit that appears onscreen. What you will get are the typical 2600 noises of “bleep bleep bleep” and “bleep bleep bleep” at a higher pitch or a “bonk bonk bonk” when you eat the cat shit that the game tries to pass for pellets. Pac-Man could have been something special, hell; it should have been something special since it was the first port of the game to a home console. Of course, at the time, Atari was only concerned with one thing: the monies.
For once though, this story has a happy ending as something unheard of happened at the time – gamers hit Atari where it hurt. The game was a flop, chastised for its lack of…well, everything that made it Pac-Man pretty much. While Atari was expecting their greatest holiday season yet, they were met with the most abysmal. As you may or may not know, Pac-Man was part of a one-two punch with the E.T. game that year, another failure worthy of its own induction. Atari was criticized for its lack of quality assurance and lax business practices as a result. Pac-Man played a part in the catalyst that not only killed Atari, but also lead to the crash of the video game industry as a whole the following couple of years. Ultimately, this all leads up to a popular legend involving a bunch of Pac-Man and ET cartridges and a road trip to the desert in New Mexico. But that’s a story for another time.
Watch Pac-Man in "action".
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One of two games that not only helped to kill a company, but crashed an industry. Pac-Man, after a ton of hype, released to home consoles and epitomized the term "disappointing". 
