Pac Man 2600

[Vic 2000]

Pac Man for Atari 2600 was a disaster when released in 1982, yet it was the most sold title for the system. Flickering ghost was just the beginning of a real bad game that certanly contributed to the video game crash in 1983.

It could have been done a lot better, take a look at this homebrew
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=81&v=fLrYmNCAUBk

Recorded in low resolution and looks much better on Stella
http://forums.atari.io/index.php?app=co ... ach_id=828

I really like this version of Pac Man, good clean graphics, smooth movement and smooth control.

[beamrider]

Great conversion. Very fast and smooth. Similar standard to Jelly Monster on the Vic.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[Vic 2000]

It has been many attempts to make a great Pac Man on Atari 2600 but this seems to be the best so far. I tested it on Stella and it has smooth nice control too.

[English Invader]

Just gave it a go on Stella. They even managed to include the cut scenes. I like the fact that they kept the square pellets which gives it an authentic 2600 feel.

When I get the chance, I'll try it on the real hardware.

[Vic 2000]

Agreed.

The guy who made this version of Pac Man did a great job. It looks good, plays smooth and sounds great. He even manage to get it real fun to play too.

[English Invader]

Just tested on a six switch VCS and it works just fine. The only snag is that the colours are a bit off because it's an NTSC file and I have a PAL system (one of the drawbacks of being a PAL Harmony user is that you have to shop around for PAL files because all the files on AtariAge are geared towards North America).

[Vic 2000]

Perhaps a PAL version is created too? The game isn't 100% finished yet.

[pixel]

One day I'll try my hands on a kernel generating sprite multiplexer for the 2600 on a cartridge with extra RAM. There can't possibly be anything more difficult to try… Coding for that machine is doing my head in. One hand–written kernel was enough.

The machine was a complete mystery. It was impossible to figure out where the graphical flaws came from without the slightest bit of documentation. That just added to the magic.

[Vic 2000]

I read that 2600 was quite hard to program and every programmer had to learn how to "chase the beam". Thanks to the limitations of 2600 you could perform stuff that wasn't even possible to do on Atari's 8bit computers.

[pixel]

I read that 2600 was quite hard to program and every programmer had to learn how to "chase the beam". Thanks to the limitations of 2600 you could perform stuff that wasn't even possible to do on Atari's 8bit computers.

It's a bloody, mind–boggling disaster, really. What things could be done on that machine that aren't possible on the later Ataris??

[Vic 2000]

It was because of "chasing the beam" that you could perform some tricks that wasn't possible on the 8bit computers. You could change the sprites in realtime in a number of ways, i read somewhere.

[pixel]

That's actually really bad. You have to set the color, byte bitmap, raw position (at the right, cycle-exact moment and fine-tuned position of a sprite for full control. Then you've got to set the background for each line and that one is even split into half vertically. So if you don't want to mirror or copy the halves you've got to take care of that timing as well. Sprites can be copied by the TIA and you might change the bitmap in midst of a line. Or you can retrigger sprites in matters of raw position. Oh, and you've got to trigger the fine positioning. With 71 cycles per line you're basically doomed. On top of it the original documentation is incorrect and you get the blues with polynominal counters. If you like pain, the VCS is the best choice to work with.

[Vic 2000]

When reading about programming Atari 2600, it seems to be both heaven and hell at the same time because of the very limited hardware and lack of documentation.

If you're half as good as you are on Vic 20, it would be great to see a game on 2600 as well in the future.

[pixel]

If you're half as good as you are on Vic 20, it would be great to see a game on 2600 as well in the future.

If that was true it'd probably take me three years to find the last bug, not one and a half like it took me with Pulse!

[Vic 2000]

He he

Be glad that i'm not even try, that would take forever to get rid of the bugs.

I'm unfortanly no retro programmer and it's a long time since i worked as a programmer in mid 90's. I wrote database appz and such things using Visual Basic (later renamed to Visual Studio). In that time bugs were a real problem when Win 95 was hot. Between us, the only real fun i had was the GUI design part. To write databases isn't that fun.