>Pac-Man programmer Todd Frye was faced with numerous handicaps caused by time, technical limitations, and company policy. Atari management rejected the idea of a larger bank-switched 8k cartridge due to the cost. The maze had to be redrawn to fit the VCS's screen geometry and the console could only display two player and four missile sprites. This could be worked around with a sprite multiplexer but with a deadline of a few weeks so the game would be shipped in time for the 1981 Christmas season, there wasn't the time to write one. Instead, Frye coded the engine to simply cycle through the sprites, causing considerable flicker. The blue background in place of the arcade game's black was due to Atari policy that all VCS games that weren't set in outer space must use a non-black background. Frye also made the decision to include the arcade's alternating two player mode, which consumed 46 of the 128 total bytes of available RAM, all of which might be used for other things.[5]
>Although some Atari management were skeptical of the game, CEO Ray Kassar said he failed to see anything wrong with Pac-Man and gave the green light for it to be shipped.[8]
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Ok
>only space shmups may use a black background
god, Atari were moronic.
Laught at him all you want, Todd Frye became a millionaire from Pac-Man royalties alone (Atari did start to pay them at that point).
cool blog chatgpt
Ms. Pac-Man was what this game was supposed to be when they had an 8k cartridge and enough time to work on it.
There was no rush to get the game out by Christmas, it came out in March 1982. It had a normal development timeframe. Most of the problems with the game were caused by Frye's insistence on a two-player mode taking up valuable memory, and the fact that he didn't really get Pac-Man so he didn't prioritize the correct elements of the arcade version to bring over.
>Most of the problems with the game were caused by Frye's insistence on a two-player mode taking up valuable memory
that was stupid. also i used to wonder why games had demo mode as it seemed like a waste of memory space but then i remembered it was probably to avoid CRTs from getting burned if the game was run in a store display for extended periods. the blue background was on Atari management though.
Also Frye was not at fault for being denied an 8k cartridge.
Atari 2600 games usually cycle through color palettes as a screensaver.
>chatgpt lied
Wuh?!?!?!
It’s wikipedia you moronic boomer.
What's wikipedia you moronic chatgpt?
Embarassing post.
Embarrassing indeed.
Copy-pasting shit from wikipedia for an OP should be a bannable offense. Lazy homosexual didn't even bother to delete the reference numbers. This isn't all that better than twitter screencap threads.
This, I'm getting tired of this flavor of low quality posts.
Its still better than Sega/Saturn alternate reality threads
those are fricking annoying
It's how DYKG and Matt McMuscles make their videos.
Frick off you piece of shit.
>wikipedia
Has anyone tried to homebrew a good version of Pac-Man on the 2600? The official Ms. Pac-Man port is supposed to be decent.
yeah
oh btw i almost forgot
the 8k version was even noticed by todd frye himself, who thought it was pretty cool
amazing what you can do with modern programming tools and no management-imposed limits on cartridge size and deadline to finish
yes. it's ok.
> programmer stupidity
no. he was given so little time to make anything that it's a miracle it got made at all.
ET could also be blamed on programmer stupidity. Howard Warshaw tried a game design that was too ambitious to work on the 2600's limited hardware.
>pitches his proposal to a room full of Universal bigshots including Steven Spielberg
>even Spielberg thought this was stupid and he was like "uh, can't we just make something like Pac-Man instead?"
ET is an underrated game. If you RTFM and git gud it's a decent game.
it's kinda strange how if a game is "badly" designed in a way that's inconvenient for the player, it can create challenge which is fun to overcome, making a game good.
Ms. Pac-Man is still pretty flickery although on a CRT you wouldn't really notice it that badly. This used an 8k cart but the 2600 can only "see" 4k of ROM at a time so it's really two separate 4k games being run that it switches between. I assume this was so they could fit the different maze layouts. With 16k they could have even gotten the intermission screens in there but this came out in '82 and 16k carts didn't become available until '83.
I think Pac-Man is fun on the VCS. Hater's gonna hate.
They got it right with Ms Pac Man and Jr Pac Man, the hardware was certainly capable. Pac Man on 2600 isn't horrible, it just isn't anywhere near arcade accurate and that was enough for people in the early 80s to be disappointed with it; particularly when there were ports far closer to the arcade original on home computers (including Atari's own.) It's definitely a good bit of hearsay and retconned history that has people going around saying it was responsible for the industry crash or that it's an unplayable garbage version of the game.
Pac-man was more than good enough considering me and everyone else would pump endless hours into whatever like pic related.
Unironically better than the original 2600 game
Nah. Those are garbage and I shit on them more than anyone. But Those are at least stupid children shitposting their moronic fantasies
There is no stupidity in shitposts like OP. Just a complete absence of intelligence. No childish fantasies. Just a mindless NPC.
Is there a definitive guide to the best hacks and homebrew for the 2600/5200/7800? There’s a shit load of them
Yes. It's called the horse you r/ode in on.
Seethe
Nah. You're seething enough for both of us.
>which consumed 46 of the 128 total bytes of available RAM
Say what you will, these guys were pros at working within limitations in the own right. You should look up how Qbert works, it's insane.
Link to insaneopedia page you're referencing so I can look up how it works as you suggest?
It's well known that bots hallucinate and make up fake citations.
It's well known that the vast majority of /vr/ posters are NPCs.