JoeTheDestroyer's Pac-Man review

The 2600 version of Pac-Man is the only one I've ever played. I didn't realise there was a difference. Well, that accounts for why so many people speak fondly of Pac-Man while I think it's kind of crap.

People stood in line for ages to buy the 2600 Pac-Man port.... and then they stood in line to return it. The game was a massive success, even though it also had more returns than any other game to date. It was a crushing disappointment to arcade fans.

Nice review -- I liked how you named Pac-Man's deformed brother "Poc-Man".

//Zig

[begin New York accent]

Eh. I've played woiss Pac-Man clones.

[end New York accent]


There has always been something I've always pondered about the reputation of this particular version of Pac-Man. Would this game -- without changing the core mechanics -- have been more tolerated without the Pac-Man branding?

Thanks, zig!

Good question, qxz. I think I still wouldn't like it, but perhaps wouldn't have been so hard on it. And by 'less hard' I pretty much mean a 3/10 vs. a 2/10.

Interesting bit-o-trivia: A lot of people blame the videogame crash in the early '80s on this rendition of Pac-Man, as well as ET.

For me, this was weird. The A2600 Pac-Man was the first version I ever played, so I didn't know better and had a reasonable amount of fun with it...until my parents bought me the more faithfully rendered Ms. Pac-Man and I never played the original again. Jr. Pac-Man was also good, but I preferred the one-screen maze where you could see everything in front of you over that game's taller ones that didn't fit on one screen.

Overdrive wrote:
For me, this was weird. The A2600 Pac-Man was the first version I ever played, so I didn't know better and had a reasonable amount of fun with it...

Same case with me. The Atari 2600 rendition of Pac-Man was literally my first experience with the brand, and I also enjoyed playing it. Of course, this was before the NES came to be, and the inevitable conversion of to said system.