Yeah, KC definitely got ripped off. Yes, it was obviously inspired and was a pac-man style game, like LOTS of games were at the time. But it wasn't a copy of Pac Man.
I had this game as a kid. You could really get creative programing some cool mazes, including ones that boxed off the munchers. The inability to save mazes made it too tedious to use, though.
I still have my Odyssey 2, I spent many evening hours at our cabin playing K.C. Munchkin, Pick Axe Pete, & Freedom Fighters. IMO the best games for the system. There is also a follow up to K.C. Munchkin called K.C.'s Krazy Chase (Kind of Pac-Man combined with Centipede in a maze).
Me too! I always thought, for a couple of years at least, that the O2 actually had better games than the VCS. But the low scoring and one life quirks were quite off-putting. Also, Atari just had too many arcade licenses. No way for anyone to compete, really.
@@AIex_Kidd Crystal Castle was an Atari game, though. Anyway, Mousetrap, Lock n Chase, and Ladybug didn't have a home ports until after Atari 2600 Pac-Man. Atari went after K.C. Munchkin because people really wanted a home version of Pac-Man and they were being Odyssey 2 systems (instead of Atari 2600 systems) just for that one game. There were oodles of Pac-Man clones on home computers and stuff, but only the Odyssey 2 was a true direct threat to Atari 2600 sales.
I have lock and chase on the 3DS virtual console and I think that game plays more like Pac-Man however the character doesn't munch the dots like Pac-Man so there is that.
There were so many Pac-Man clones back in the early 80's. I think this one looks very unique and I like the variation in the mazes. I personally think this game is unique enough that that Magnavox should of won the case.
Our family got the Magnavox Odyssey 2 instead of the Atari 2600 and I absolutely loved K,C, Munchkin, and I was devastated when my parents eventually sold the system and games while I was off at school. of course by then the game was remade and was much different so I was unable to afford an original copy back then. Of course Atari sued, they knew this game was leaps and bounds better than what their game was. and I had lots of fun inviting my friends over to play my version of Pac-Man as opposed to their C-man game on their Atari console. and yes that is how I always referred to their Pac-man, both because he was literally a large letter C and also for the inuendo. LOL
There were alot of Pac Man clones back then. Games like Lady Bug, Cat Trax, and Chase the Chuck Wagon. I like the Lady Bug homebrew on Atari 2600 because it has rotating walls.
K.C. Munchkin, Pick Axe Pete and U.F.O. were my favorites of the 15 or so games I owned. UFO was an odd Asteroids clone with a unique aiming method and a really fun chain-reaction system when blowing up the asteroids. You just know that this time you’re gonna beat your high score! No, I meant this time! No, this is the one! lol
I liked the fact that you have to slightly move your ship to change the aim of your laser gun. Not everyone who played it (in the supermarket's game dept) noticed that.
I loved UFO as well and usually just used the shield to ram the asteroids since aiming usually ended up getting me killed.... lol. Pick Axe Pete I found overly tough at a super young age. Thunderball was also quite fun.
@@chriswheatley3146 Pick Axe Pete is a typical game of the late 70's, early 80's: easy to understand but hard as nails. Just climb ladders, knock boulders with your axe, but so utterly frustrating! UFO can be played using both strategies: move your ship to rotate the "turret" and shoot, watch the debris hit other asteroids. Or just carefully ram them with your force field and try to survive the moments when you're invulnerable while your force field is replenished. Excellent game, sadly not recognised by many.
I still have my Odyssey 2 and a collection of about 30 games, all in their original boxes, including the three board game combo games! My folks bought the whole shebang for me used in the year Nintendo was released, bizarrely. I’d had my 2600 since Christmas of ‘82, but by ‘86 I really wasn’t playing it. I fell in love with the O2 games, actually. Heck, friends who had the new NES were coming over to play it! Heheh We all loved Quest of the Rings, especially (as we were D&D gamers as well)! I also found I greatly preferred the O2 joysticks. Thanks for this! I hope do more in the future! 🙂
My half-brother owned a copy of the game. He was released from jail in 1983. He played the Hardcastle & McCormick theme song on his electric guitar back then. He was also a fan of the late Jon-Erik Hexum.
system and cartridge memory restrictions means that nearly all Odyssey2 games are single player (the only exception I can think of is the EXCELLENT arcade port of Turtles which comes on a 4K cartridge.) I stood in the store looking at the Atari 2600 and the Odyssey2 and was sold by the Odyssey's keyboard and their very unique two player Breakout clone and very different take on Space Invaders...I never regretted this pusrchase decision, even after the system was discontinued (living down the street from the Phillips warehouse gave me access to all the games for months to come. CHEAP!) KC Munkin was part of the Odyssey2's "Challenger series" which featured enhanced graphics and memory size - along with some of the best games on the system (Turtles, KC Muchkin & KC's Crazy Chase, PT Barnum. Pick Axe Pete, Killer Bees, MonkeyShines(!!!good game!!!) and others). The real claim to fame for the system though was it's board game/video game hybrids...where you played a board game that included video game elements. Truly unique and great fun. It is interesting to note that all of the Odyssey2's release titles were written by one coder...an Intel salesperson.
Odyssey 2 also features a number of sports games which are exclusively 2 player, so you sort of have to pick your poison in that regard. I really enjoy O2 Football, but I'll never get anyone to play it with me. O2 Volleyball is bizarre and has a 1 player option, so I play that pretty regularly when my O2 is out and hooked up.
They might as well call it "Great Value Dot Muncher" or "Kirkland Dot Muncher". We had an Odyssey 2. It was the Sears Toughskins of game consoles. EVERYBODY else had an Atari 2600 or ColecoVision. The Odyssey 2 was supposed to be much more powerful than the Atari 2600, but the games all felt like they told someone "Do a game like Donkey Kong but make it 'better' and we'll call it Pick Axe Pete and you have 2 weeks to finish it." The best Odyssey 2 game I can remember was Atlantis, which is funny because Atlantis was also on the 2600 and it was the same game.
Thank you Jon for today's Genx plays. I own this game, but I have never played it. I may just hook up my Odyssey 2 and try it out. I know there is a Colecovision homebrew version of this and also a homebrew for the 2600 of it. Keep up the amazing work on bringing your dream to life and giving us some great content.
What a great little game. Vaguely reminds me of Data East's Lock 'N' Chase, especially with the variation where the map keeps changing. Keep up the awesome work! :-)
Never had Munch Man back in the day. First had only Parsec, Alpiner, A-Mazing, and Tombstone City. Later, I was able to take advantage of the super discount Atarisoft cartridges in the Triton catalog, and for $5 each, got Star Trek and Burgertime.
I had a friend back in the day who had the O2 and this game. I don't think I knew at the time about the lawsuit, but I did learn of it prior to this video.
I never had an Odyssey II, but one of my friends did. We used to use that maze editor and try to design some of the narlyest mazes and then challenge the other to try to beat it. We even did one maze where we took away all the walls, just leaving the outer boarder and the center "monster house" and see what will happen. If I recall, I think K.C. Munchkin can actually go diagonally in a wide open "maze" like that, but then again, that was some 40 years ago, so my memory is a bit fuzzy there. I still thought it was a cool and interesting game at the time, and it was a way to play a "Pac-Man" like game if all you had was this and did not have access to an actual Pac-Man game. In hindsight, we all know how the Atari Pac-Man game turned out, although the Ms Pac-Man game was really well done on the 2600.
I had a choice when I was a kid... Go with my parents to Hawaii OR they buy me the new Oddessy 2. I took the trip, but I still regret not getting the game system.
Definitely one of the best games on the console as well as it's sequel, KC's Krazy Chase. Other really good selections are: Pick Axe Pete, Attack of the Timelord, Smithereens, Killer Bees and Turtles.
My parents had this game when I was really young. It was my second favorite game on the Odyssey 2 besides UFO. It's definitely a Pac-Man style game (clone), but I'd never consider it a Pac-Man replacement as me and my neighbor friends enjoyed both equally in different ways. It's really sad this one got successfully sued when there were others out there that didn't; but I can see some of the reasons. If I remember correctly, there's also a game option where the maze is hidden when you moved. As for the 4 number score, that's pretty common with Odyssey 2 games as many of them use the same layout on the bottom of the screen.
In the 4-room game go up into the top room on the right and go into the nook on the left side of that room and just sit there and they will never touch you:)
Hi Jon. Thanks for your great channel. I loved watching KC Munchkin as I had an Odyssey 2. You should try Alien Invader Plus. It is a Space an invader type of game on the Odyssey 2 which I think you’d love. Thanks for all you do.
After seeing this, I'll compar KC Munchkin to Whitesnake's "Still of the Night". Maybe it's not Pac Man or Led Zeppelin, but it's a prety awesome inspiration.
@@GenXGrownUp Aren't most Odyssey 2 games one and done? That console is so underpowered compared to the 2600. I knew a girl who had one in the early 80's and she hated it
It's always seemed odd to me that of all the Pac-Man clones that were made, Atari chose to go after this one in court - I guess it's because the game was successful and it predated Atari's own port of Pac-Man. I can probably think of a dozen Pac-Man clones that are more blatantly derivative than KC Munchkin.
I grew up with this game and always hit "1" for some reason. I never considered "0" to be the standard. But I loved making my own maze with "5". What a neat game. It's too bad it didn't feature 3 lives. Even worse, it's too bad that Odyssey 2 didn't have more 3rd party support. The game library is sorely lacking compared to Atari 2600.
Not that it would have mattered to the eventual fate of either system, but the courts were clearly wrong on this one. And KC Munchkin was *so* much better than the Pac-Man for the VCS. I had an Odyssey 2 as a kid and loved it, but they self-sabotaged in many ways. *All* of their games were low-scoring like KC, and they all had the one life rule. Such a weird choice. I assume it had to do with the technical limitations of the system. At any rate, all the kids that played the O2 at my house didn't like those quirks about the system, even though it had many great games that they otherwise loved.
That's unfortunate - I was one of those kids who visited a friend to play their Odyssey 2. I loved all the games on it, that we played. I didn't even notice the one life thing, because I was just going to resume playing anyway. This was, of course, before there were "Game Over" scenes that took a while to load and watch, much less load times to start the next game.
In today's era of 'genres' (or even by the 90s) there's no way this lawsuit would have gone through. It really was one of the best games on the Oddysey 2 along with Pick-Axe Pete. I am sure Quest for the Rings would be the best game for it, but it involves a load of outside the game tools, cards, gameboard etc. to play properly.
I've only ever seen one Odyssey2 while it was available. It was in my elementary school library. I've only ever seen one place where they were sold and that was the very same store that donated the console to my school. I have never, ever seen one at another kid's home and that's a shame cuz it wasn't all that bad a system.
The problem is the fact it looked like pac-man, and also had too many pac-man elements. You don’t need tunnels, you don’t need power pellets, you don’t need editable ghosts, ya don’t need a ghost hut. Not to mentioned it looked very similar to pac-man.
It’s maybe best Philips Videopac game out there. And notice how I am calling it Videopac as it was called here at Europe. I would maybe think it as maze game not as Pacman. But as 80’s there were so many clones of every game. Think Commodore for example. Many Vic20 or C64 cartridges were direct clones of other games. They just change name. And who knows how many Donkey Kong or Space Invaders clones we had at tapes. And nobody could care less.. K.C Munchin also has sequel K.C Crazy Chase. Maybe you could test that too. It’s a little different and I also call it maze game… Maybe you call it Pacman too.. 😊
There are many great games I haven't had the opportunity to play throughout my 45 years of video gaming and K.C. Munchkin was the first one. This is leagues better than the awful VCS PacMan. It's a pretty long list of games. The good news is Daxter on the PSP won't be on that list much longer. Is that hat available at your store? I want it.
@@GenXGrownUp You're correct according to wikipedia: "K.C. Munchkin!, released in Europe as Munchkin, is a maze game for the Magnavox Odyssey 2. Its North American title is an inside reference to then president of Philips Consumer Electronics, Kenneth C. Menkin."
It was such a bullshit ruling, and I'm not just saying that because I had a defective copy and was not able to get it replaced because of the recall due to the lawsuit. I went with my dad to Sears to return it for a new one, just to have the person say that no...they couldn't give me any of the copies they clearly had in the case. And they even tried to bully us claiming we HAD to give back our copy. We didn't, even thought it didn't work. My dad was hoping a co-worker at IBM might be able to fix it. IT never happened. So now I still have a broken copy of KC Munchkin lying around. I'd like to think that's why Sears went bankrupt 35 or so years later. Because of what they did to a little boy who wanted to play a PacMan like game at home. It was WAY more different than all the other PacMan clones out there. And for "feel of the game" there were plenty of dot eating maze chase games before PacMan. So why didn't Exidy have a say in things? If KC Munchkin was close enough to PacMan, than PacMan was close enough to Crash.
Pac man for the 2600 was an abomination of the original. Maybe they rushed it to market, but if I'm playing pacman on the 2600, it's Ms. Pac man! That port was done very well!
I have been searching for an original Video Pac for years now, even the emulator on my Pi didnt work. So I have to ask you, what emulator is this? KC and Freedom Fighters has to be the best games on this console.
So in short, it had nothing to do with the game's similarity to Pac man (some games on the 2600 were closer) and much more an effort to cripple your competitor. As far as I am concerned Atari had no business chasing this as it wasn't their intellectual property to begin with.
@@AdamConus Agree. The stick was self-centering and actually much more precise and comfortable to use than a CX40. But, then again, it's all in what you get used to, I suppose. I even got used to a Colecovision controller eventually! 😂😂😂
@@jameserdmann2468 It was self centering. However, it'd get knocked out of alignment easily. Luckily the tension and alignment could be adjusted without too much trouble (according to my dad).
Frankly, I think that KC Munchkin was NOTHING like Pac Man. Sure it had a little character that went around eating things, but the gameplay was so radically different than Pac Man. It only looks like Pac Man at a quick glance. But watching the gameplay, it clearly isn't Pac Man. At this time, there were a LOT of maze chase games out there. This game was distinctly different with the exception that it was a maze chase game. I never understood the argument that it was pretty much just a Pac Man copy.
I personally find it hilarious Atari sued over this ( i am familiar with the story and yeah their was good reason) when their port of Pac-man for the 2600 was so terrible. That said i had not seen the game until now and clearly Atari should have lost but likely they easily could afford better lawyers.
Strange that atari payed more money suing another game maker over using the money to make pacman more arcade like then the p.o.s lame ass pac man game that helped tank home video games in the 80's. The modern 2600 homebrew would have exploded the 2600 console sales if it would have been released back then! Atari founder was a cheapass that made poor cheap business decions that emploded his own franchise.
You missed talking about 5-9: the invisible mazes! Whenever you move, the mazes disappear! You need to try those! Taken as a whole with the invisible mazes, I have always felt the 1st judge got it right. And I also feel KC is a far better, more playable and definitely more fun game than Atari Pacman. Just sayin...
I had an Oddysey 2 instead of a Atari when I was a kid. I never had this one, but I had the follow up, KCs Krazy Chase. If you had the voice module, he talked!
What killed it was timing - Atari didn't have their Pac-Man port ready yet, and in the meantime people were buying Odyssey 2 systems just for K.C. Munchkin. Atari didn't even have to win the lawsuit, they just needed to abuse the law to make them stop selling K.C. Munchkin for some months. They lost at first, but then they got lucky, with a bad judgement in their favor. But winning the lawsuit was never the point. It's telling that Atari didn't sue any of the MANY Pac-Man clones on more expensive computer systems, nor did they bother to sue any of the popular Pac-Man clones on consoles after they got their own Pac-Man port out. It was never about the merits (or lack thereof) of the case. It was strictly a business move to attack a competitor at a critical time.
It's PacMan the same way lots of other clones are PacMan. I really like your wording near the end, where you called it a "riff on PacMan," which is what it is, and not a copy. Just a variation, as many others were and would be. Atari didn't sue because they thought it was a copy. There were lots of copies/variations. They could have sued others too. They didn't. They didn't even sue any of the others after they won and were feeling confidant. Look at all the Space Invaders clones? Alien Invaders Plus was just as much a Space Invades copy as KC is a PacMan copy. Ripe to sue for that too!!! But they didn't sue, any of those. They sued because it was just before Atari was going to release their own version. It was all about market timing, not product. I don't agree that they should have won the case personally. And I'd bet Magnavox could have taken the case up again and won. But it wasn't financially worth it. And I really don't think this ended up being a landmark case, because it didn't slow down game clones at all... Lots more came out after this case... The case was flawed and people knew it. But you are a die hard Atari guy, so I started this vid knowing where you would be on it. ;-) As for fun, it's a fun game to play. But I think KCs Krazy Chase, the follow up, is better. Best game on the O2 IMHO, especially if you have The Voice module...
You may be wrong about your assumptions of my opinion. I understand and agree with Atari's decision to protect their investment, but I also think the ruling was ultimately wrong. And regardless of the outcome, this did help to establish the groundwork how video game copyright would be treated going forward. I appreciate you watching and taking the time to share your thoughts! 😁
Ti99 didn't have KC Munchkin, but it did have Munchman - a really nice Pac-Man clone with small sprites and a distinctive white background look (most Pac-Man clones had a black background).
I played a fair amount of Munch Man on the TI at my friend's house around Middle School age. Wasn't that one reversed where you were painting the maze rather than clearing it?
To be fair the Atari 2600 version of Pac Man was so bad that it made KC Munchkin look pretty good. And Odyssey games came in cool boxes printed on foil - and they put more effort into the box art than the game itself. But the 2600 still had all the Activision games. And that's the real reason the Odyssey sucked. Imagine if Activision had made slightly better versions of their games for the Odyssey or ColecoVision or IntelliVision.
I remember playing KC Munchkin at my nextdoor neighbor's house when I was a kid. Ironically it was about 3000% better than the home port of Pac-Man I owned for the 2600! The only thing that sucked about the O2 was that the control stick couldn't return to center like the ones we were all used to.
You don't do much Commodore stuff. I've been addicted to this old game called Serpentine for Vic20 and C64. It's a cool maze snake game. Unfortunately it was only released in Europe so I never seen it as a kid. I actually found it on PCUAE collection, a USB loader front end for TheC64 and The400 mini.
Loved this game as a die hard Pac-man fan...The fact this had a maze editor put it way ahead of its time...I used to spend hours trying to recreate the maze from arcade Pac-man...Only to lose it when you turned off the console!...What brilliant times they were
That designing your own maze feature was way ahead of its time! Objection your honor, I think KC got a raw deal!
Yeah, KC definitely got ripped off. Yes, it was obviously inspired and was a pac-man style game, like LOTS of games were at the time. But it wasn't a copy of Pac Man.
I had this game as a kid. You could really get creative programing some cool mazes, including ones that boxed off the munchers. The inability to save mazes made it too tedious to use, though.
The shit Atari pulled back then would not have flied now in 2024!!!
You know, now that you think about it, K.C. Munchkin could possibly be seen as Odyssey 2's mascot. Not just for this game, but for K.C.'s Crazy Chase.
The Crash Bandicoot of 1981 😂
I still have my Odyssey 2, I spent many evening hours at our cabin playing K.C. Munchkin, Pick Axe Pete, & Freedom Fighters. IMO the best games for the system.
There is also a follow up to K.C. Munchkin called K.C.'s Krazy Chase (Kind of Pac-Man combined with Centipede in a maze).
Me too! I always thought, for a couple of years at least, that the O2 actually had better games than the VCS. But the low scoring and one life quirks were quite off-putting. Also, Atari just had too many arcade licenses. No way for anyone to compete, really.
oddly Mousetrap, Lock n Chase and Ladybug went unscathed.
And even tho it looks 3D'ish, I'd add Crystal castle to the list
The difference here is that the main character is virtually identical to Pac Man.
@@AIex_Kidd Crystal Castle was an Atari game, though.
Anyway, Mousetrap, Lock n Chase, and Ladybug didn't have a home ports until after Atari 2600 Pac-Man. Atari went after K.C. Munchkin because people really wanted a home version of Pac-Man and they were being Odyssey 2 systems (instead of Atari 2600 systems) just for that one game.
There were oodles of Pac-Man clones on home computers and stuff, but only the Odyssey 2 was a true direct threat to Atari 2600 sales.
@@JustMe99999 when he is in motion he definitely is
I have lock and chase on the 3DS virtual console and I think that game plays more like Pac-Man however the character doesn't munch the dots like Pac-Man so there is that.
There were so many Pac-Man clones back in the early 80's. I think this one looks very unique and I like the variation in the mazes. I personally think this game is unique enough that that Magnavox should of won the case.
I'd tend to agree with you.
Our family got the Magnavox Odyssey 2 instead of the Atari 2600 and I absolutely loved K,C, Munchkin, and I was devastated when my parents eventually sold the system and games while I was off at school. of course by then the game was remade and was much different so I was unable to afford an original copy back then.
Of course Atari sued, they knew this game was leaps and bounds better than what their game was. and I had lots of fun inviting my friends over to play my version of Pac-Man as opposed to their C-man game on their Atari console. and yes that is how I always referred to their Pac-man, both because he was literally a large letter C and also for the inuendo. LOL
There were alot of Pac Man clones back then. Games like Lady Bug, Cat Trax, and Chase the Chuck Wagon. I like the Lady Bug homebrew on Atari 2600 because it has rotating walls.
K.C. Munchkin, Pick Axe Pete and U.F.O. were my favorites of the 15 or so games I owned.
UFO was an odd Asteroids clone with a unique aiming method and a really fun chain-reaction system when blowing up the asteroids. You just know that this time you’re gonna beat your high score! No, I meant this time! No, this is the one! lol
I liked the fact that you have to slightly move your ship to change the aim of your laser gun. Not everyone who played it (in the supermarket's game dept) noticed that.
I loved UFO as well and usually just used the shield to ram the asteroids since aiming usually ended up getting me killed.... lol. Pick Axe Pete I found overly tough at a super young age. Thunderball was also quite fun.
@@chriswheatley3146 Pick Axe Pete is a typical game of the late 70's, early 80's: easy to understand but hard as nails. Just climb ladders, knock boulders with your axe, but so utterly frustrating!
UFO can be played using both strategies: move your ship to rotate the "turret" and shoot, watch the debris hit other asteroids. Or just carefully ram them with your force field and try to survive the moments when you're invulnerable while your force field is replenished. Excellent game, sadly not recognised by many.
I still have my Odyssey 2 and a collection of about 30 games, all in their original boxes, including the three board game combo games!
My folks bought the whole shebang for me used in the year Nintendo was released, bizarrely.
I’d had my 2600 since Christmas of ‘82, but by ‘86 I really wasn’t playing it. I fell in love with the O2 games, actually. Heck, friends who had the new NES were coming over to play it! Heheh
We all loved Quest of the Rings, especially (as we were D&D gamers as well)!
I also found I greatly preferred the O2 joysticks.
Thanks for this! I hope do more in the future! 🙂
My half-brother owned a copy of the game. He was released from jail in 1983. He played the Hardcastle & McCormick theme song on his electric guitar back then. He was also a fan of the late Jon-Erik Hexum.
👌
I would definitely call it a derivative of pac-man. I personally think it was different enough that it shouldn't have been an issue.
I thought it was more like LadyBug with the shifting maze that you could use to your advantage.
I think it's a blatant rip off.
system and cartridge memory restrictions means that nearly all Odyssey2 games are single player (the only exception I can think of is the EXCELLENT arcade port of Turtles which comes on a 4K cartridge.)
I stood in the store looking at the Atari 2600 and the Odyssey2 and was sold by the Odyssey's keyboard and their very unique two player Breakout clone and very different take on Space Invaders...I never regretted this pusrchase decision, even after the system was discontinued (living down the street from the Phillips warehouse gave me access to all the games for months to come. CHEAP!)
KC Munkin was part of the Odyssey2's "Challenger series" which featured enhanced graphics and memory size - along with some of the best games on the system (Turtles, KC Muchkin & KC's Crazy Chase, PT Barnum. Pick Axe Pete, Killer Bees, MonkeyShines(!!!good game!!!) and others).
The real claim to fame for the system though was it's board game/video game hybrids...where you played a board game that included video game elements. Truly unique and great fun. It is interesting to note that all of the Odyssey2's release titles were written by one coder...an Intel salesperson.
Odyssey 2 also features a number of sports games which are exclusively 2 player, so you sort of have to pick your poison in that regard. I really enjoy O2 Football, but I'll never get anyone to play it with me. O2 Volleyball is bizarre and has a 1 player option, so I play that pretty regularly when my O2 is out and hooked up.
They might as well call it "Great Value Dot Muncher" or "Kirkland Dot Muncher". We had an Odyssey 2. It was the Sears Toughskins of game consoles. EVERYBODY else had an Atari 2600 or ColecoVision. The Odyssey 2 was supposed to be much more powerful than the Atari 2600, but the games all felt like they told someone "Do a game like Donkey Kong but make it 'better' and we'll call it Pick Axe Pete and you have 2 weeks to finish it." The best Odyssey 2 game I can remember was Atlantis, which is funny because Atlantis was also on the 2600 and it was the same game.
Thank you Jon for today's Genx plays. I own this game, but I have never played it. I may just hook up my Odyssey 2 and try it out. I know there is a Colecovision homebrew version of this and also a homebrew for the 2600 of it. Keep up the amazing work on bringing your dream to life and giving us some great content.
Never owned an Odyssey, but I own KC Munchkin and KC’s Krazy Chase (both in the box) for their historical interest.
What a great little game. Vaguely reminds me of Data East's Lock 'N' Chase, especially with the variation where the map keeps changing. Keep up the awesome work! :-)
I grew up with Munch Man on the TI/99 computer :).
Never had Munch Man back in the day. First had only Parsec, Alpiner, A-Mazing, and Tombstone City. Later, I was able to take advantage of the super discount Atarisoft cartridges in the Triton catalog, and for $5 each, got Star Trek and Burgertime.
That’s a well done game inspired by one of the all time greatest!
Thanks Jon
You know, for a Pac-Man clone, this is pretty good! I really like the different mazes available. Great choice.
Agreed!
This game ia awesome. I played for many hours back then.
That seems like a really interesting game.
Atari probably sued because they were jealous that Odyssey was able to get the "Pac-Man's" mouth to move in all four directions.
Ha!
Hilarious comment! Both games were pretty awful TBH.
...and then came K.C.'s Crazy Chase to try yo make him even further different than Pac-Man
I had a friend back in the day who had the O2 and this game. I don't think I knew at the time about the lawsuit, but I did learn of it prior to this video.
I never had an Odyssey II, but one of my friends did. We used to use that maze editor and try to design some of the narlyest mazes and then challenge the other to try to beat it. We even did one maze where we took away all the walls, just leaving the outer boarder and the center "monster house" and see what will happen. If I recall, I think K.C. Munchkin can actually go diagonally in a wide open "maze" like that, but then again, that was some 40 years ago, so my memory is a bit fuzzy there. I still thought it was a cool and interesting game at the time, and it was a way to play a "Pac-Man" like game if all you had was this and did not have access to an actual Pac-Man game. In hindsight, we all know how the Atari Pac-Man game turned out, although the Ms Pac-Man game was really well done on the 2600.
I had a choice when I was a kid... Go with my parents to Hawaii OR they buy me the new Oddessy 2. I took the trip, but I still regret not getting the game system.
Odyssey 2 was a lot more popular across the pond . So they got system's and accessories we never got .
Definitely one of the best games on the console as well as it's sequel, KC's Krazy Chase. Other really good selections are: Pick Axe Pete, Attack of the Timelord, Smithereens, Killer Bees and Turtles.
My parents had this game when I was really young. It was my second favorite game on the Odyssey 2 besides UFO. It's definitely a Pac-Man style game (clone), but I'd never consider it a Pac-Man replacement as me and my neighbor friends enjoyed both equally in different ways. It's really sad this one got successfully sued when there were others out there that didn't; but I can see some of the reasons.
If I remember correctly, there's also a game option where the maze is hidden when you moved. As for the 4 number score, that's pretty common with Odyssey 2 games as many of them use the same layout on the bottom of the screen.
I just realized that the maze is asymmetrical
In the 4-room game go up into the top room on the right and go into the nook on the left side of that room and just sit there and they will never touch you:)
I love seeing retro games I missed.
Hi Jon. Thanks for your great channel. I loved watching KC Munchkin as I had an Odyssey 2. You should try Alien Invader Plus. It is a Space an invader type of game on the Odyssey 2 which I think you’d love. Thanks for all you do.
After seeing this, I'll compar KC Munchkin to Whitesnake's "Still of the Night". Maybe it's not Pac Man or Led Zeppelin, but it's a prety awesome inspiration.
I think you should play Hover Force for the Intellivision next time!
It does look like Pac-Man but at the same time is different? Very interesting, I've never heard of this game before. Looks good for the time.👍🏻🇺🇲
One life per game holds this one back big time
One mistake and you're done. I think I might come back to it more frequently if it had lives/health rather than insta-game-over.
@@GenXGrownUp Aren't most Odyssey 2 games one and done? That console is so underpowered compared to the 2600. I knew a girl who had one in the early 80's and she hated it
@@JohnSegerclucka You may be right. I know very little about the O2, but I'm learning!
It's always seemed odd to me that of all the Pac-Man clones that were made, Atari chose to go after this one in court - I guess it's because the game was successful and it predated Atari's own port of Pac-Man. I can probably think of a dozen Pac-Man clones that are more blatantly derivative than KC Munchkin.
IMHO, it was a matter of timing. KC was released less than a year before their home version was scheduled to be released.
Now that I think about it, I haven't played my Videopac (=European version of the Odyssey2) for a long time. Maybe tonight I'll give it a go
The Philips Videopac 7400?
But when he was wearing a shirt that said "As you wish" on it, what it really should've said is, "This is Pac-Man"....
I grew up with this game and always hit "1" for some reason. I never considered "0" to be the standard. But I loved making my own maze with "5". What a neat game. It's too bad it didn't feature 3 lives. Even worse, it's too bad that Odyssey 2 didn't have more 3rd party support. The game library is sorely lacking compared to Atari 2600.
Not that it would have mattered to the eventual fate of either system, but the courts were clearly wrong on this one. And KC Munchkin was *so* much better than the Pac-Man for the VCS. I had an Odyssey 2 as a kid and loved it, but they self-sabotaged in many ways. *All* of their games were low-scoring like KC, and they all had the one life rule. Such a weird choice. I assume it had to do with the technical limitations of the system. At any rate, all the kids that played the O2 at my house didn't like those quirks about the system, even though it had many great games that they otherwise loved.
That's unfortunate - I was one of those kids who visited a friend to play their Odyssey 2. I loved all the games on it, that we played. I didn't even notice the one life thing, because I was just going to resume playing anyway. This was, of course, before there were "Game Over" scenes that took a while to load and watch, much less load times to start the next game.
In today's era of 'genres' (or even by the 90s) there's no way this lawsuit would have gone through. It really was one of the best games on the Oddysey 2 along with Pick-Axe Pete. I am sure Quest for the Rings would be the best game for it, but it involves a load of outside the game tools, cards, gameboard etc. to play properly.
KC Munchkin was a great game, but I prefer the sequel. KC's Crazy Chase.
my uncle had the odsessy console and us kids would fight over who was gonna play K.C. Munchkin
I've only ever seen one Odyssey2 while it was available. It was in my elementary school library. I've only ever seen one place where they were sold and that was the very same store that donated the console to my school.
I have never, ever seen one at another kid's home and that's a shame cuz it wasn't all that bad a system.
The problem is the fact it looked like pac-man, and also had too many pac-man elements. You don’t need tunnels, you don’t need power pellets, you don’t need editable ghosts, ya don’t need a ghost hut. Not to mentioned it looked very similar to pac-man.
The brazilian tv ad for that game is worth a look. If you know portuguese, the last phrase sounds kinda... inappropriate.
It’s maybe best Philips Videopac game out there. And notice how I am calling it Videopac as it was called here at Europe. I would maybe think it as maze game not as Pacman.
But as 80’s there were so many clones of every game. Think Commodore for example. Many Vic20 or C64 cartridges were direct clones of other games. They just change name. And who knows how many Donkey Kong or Space Invaders clones we had at tapes. And nobody could care less..
K.C Munchin also has sequel K.C Crazy Chase. Maybe you could test that too. It’s a little different and I also call it maze game… Maybe you call it Pacman too.. 😊
There are many great games I haven't had the opportunity to play throughout my 45 years of video gaming and K.C. Munchkin was the first one. This is leagues better than the awful VCS PacMan.
It's a pretty long list of games. The good news is Daxter on the PSP won't be on that list much longer.
Is that hat available at your store? I want it.
Great video Jon! So what does the K.C. mean? 😊
Never explained as far as I know, but it was known to be a reference to then president of Philips Consumer Electronics, Kenneth C. Menkin.
@@GenXGrownUp You're correct according to wikipedia:
"K.C. Munchkin!, released in Europe as Munchkin, is a maze game for the Magnavox Odyssey 2. Its North American title is an inside reference to then president of Philips Consumer Electronics, Kenneth C. Menkin."
Any rumors on My Arcade releasing a true version of Pac-Man, like they did with Ms. Pac-Man?
The Pac-Man Pro line last year (Pocket Player Pro, Micro Player Pro, etc.) are the closest they've come so far.
It was such a bullshit ruling, and I'm not just saying that because I had a defective copy and was not able to get it replaced because of the recall due to the lawsuit. I went with my dad to Sears to return it for a new one, just to have the person say that no...they couldn't give me any of the copies they clearly had in the case. And they even tried to bully us claiming we HAD to give back our copy. We didn't, even thought it didn't work. My dad was hoping a co-worker at IBM might be able to fix it. IT never happened. So now I still have a broken copy of KC Munchkin lying around.
I'd like to think that's why Sears went bankrupt 35 or so years later. Because of what they did to a little boy who wanted to play a PacMan like game at home. It was WAY more different than all the other PacMan clones out there. And for "feel of the game" there were plenty of dot eating maze chase games before PacMan. So why didn't Exidy have a say in things? If KC Munchkin was close enough to PacMan, than PacMan was close enough to Crash.
Oh, no!
Pac man for the 2600 was an abomination of the original. Maybe they rushed it to market, but if I'm playing pacman on the 2600, it's Ms. Pac man! That port was done very well!
I've heard that marijuana smokers get the "munchies" too!
I have been searching for an original Video Pac for years now, even the emulator on my Pi didnt work.
So I have to ask you, what emulator is this? KC and Freedom Fighters has to be the best games on this console.
I'm just using the O2EM core in Retroarch, and it seems to work wonderfully.
@@GenXGrownUp Thanks man. I'll have a look at that 🙂👍♥️
Idk courts have really losened up on this. Look at that new Palworld as a clone to Pokemon
Great review ❤
Glad you liked it!!
@@GenXGrownUp okay 😊
@@GenXGrownUp 😊😊😊cool
So in short, it had nothing to do with the game's similarity to Pac man (some games on the 2600 were closer) and much more an effort to cripple your competitor.
As far as I am concerned Atari had no business chasing this as it wasn't their intellectual property to begin with.
I don't agree with the final ruling, but Atari did have a right to protect the license they had acquired.
I don't really see how this had legal woes, but Munchman on the TI994/A was okay.
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Lol..."a muncher box...."
When K.C. is looking at you he talks with the voice unit. you only hear the TV voice output on this video NOT the voice unit here.
What does he say?
@@GenXGrownUp KC couldn't talk in this one. Only in the sequel, KC'S Krazy Chase.
K. C. Munchkin may have been a knockoff,but the game was actually fun.
C'mon, this is certainly a type of clone but not Pac Man. Still looks and plays better than the Atari 2600 Pac Man.
I no longer play on that console I’m playing on Xbox series X PS5 Xbox 360 PS3 PS4 Nintendo Switch Wii Wii U and PC right now
OK
Had a friend in grade school who had the Odyssey 2 and had KC Munchkin. Pretty good game, but the Odyssey’s controller was kind of janky.
Was that the one with the little skinny metal stick with a plastic nub?
Yep, that’s it. I don’t think it was self centering either or if it was it wasn’t very good.
I literally bought an 02 so I could play the games with the proper controller. I think it's an excellent joystick, particularly for it's time.
@@AdamConus Agree. The stick was self-centering and actually much more precise and comfortable to use than a CX40. But, then again, it's all in what you get used to, I suppose. I even got used to a Colecovision controller eventually! 😂😂😂
@@jameserdmann2468 It was self centering. However, it'd get knocked out of alignment easily. Luckily the tension and alignment could be adjusted without too much trouble (according to my dad).
Nice Hobby Lobby hat! What else did you get!?
I got this from a game store last year - haven't hit up Hobby Lobby in a while. 😁
Well, that is the exact hat they sell for $10 at Hobby Lobby.
@@cryptocoffee13 Don't doubt you for a second.
You can add another one as a backup if you want. 😉
they should have left the odyssey alone....yeah it's apacman variation....so what...atari was the big fish at the time so the did it...
Frankly, I think that KC Munchkin was NOTHING like Pac Man. Sure it had a little character that went around eating things, but the gameplay was so radically different than Pac Man. It only looks like Pac Man at a quick glance. But watching the gameplay, it clearly isn't Pac Man. At this time, there were a LOT of maze chase games out there. This game was distinctly different with the exception that it was a maze chase game. I never understood the argument that it was pretty much just a Pac Man copy.
It's all about perception. Is it close enough to impact sales of what Atari had paid for? And that answer was ultimately, yes.
Or for Phillips G700 in the rest of the world 🌎😂
Indeed.
I personally find it hilarious Atari sued over this ( i am familiar with the story and yeah their was good reason) when their port of Pac-man for the 2600 was so terrible. That said i had not seen the game until now and clearly Atari should have lost but likely they easily could afford better lawyers.
I'd tend to agree. I get them trying to defend the license they paid for, but Philips probably should've been victorious.
Ever played CD-man? Its really a ripoff of pacman except its not just ghosts that chase you
Strange that atari payed more money suing another game maker over using the money to make pacman more arcade like then the p.o.s lame ass pac man game that helped tank home video games in the 80's. The modern 2600 homebrew would have exploded the 2600 console sales if it would have been released back then! Atari founder was a cheapass that made poor cheap business decions that emploded his own franchise.
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I was not expecting an Odyssey 2 game. Good choice.
I have a long list of candidates, but when I fired this one up I was sold and decided it had to be next. Look, squirrel! 🐿️
@GenXGrownUp You need to get some friends together and play the three Odyssey 2 board games.
I remember Snackman on the Commodore 64 back in 1982.
I just looked it up. That was a much MORE blatant copy than Munchkin to my eye! 😁
That is definitely a twist. I wasn't expecting that but fun stuff. Great job.
Glad you liked it!
You missed talking about 5-9: the invisible mazes! Whenever you move, the mazes disappear! You need to try those! Taken as a whole with the invisible mazes, I have always felt the 1st judge got it right. And I also feel KC is a far better, more playable and definitely more fun game than Atari Pacman. Just sayin...
Oh, I forgot about those! Dang it!
You should try K.C's crazy chase for Odyssey 2 as well.
That's actually a very clever clone of Pac-Man. Just not clever enough I guess according to the courts.
ya the courts also found OJ Simpson innocent, so Im not always buying what they sellin
I had an Oddysey 2 instead of a Atari when I was a kid. I never had this one, but I had the follow up, KCs Krazy Chase. If you had the voice module, he talked!
Had a couple friends who had an Odyssey2, and K.C. Munchkin was great! Particularly in contrast to the 2600 Pac-Man.
Way Much better then Pac-Man on the VCS... Great work Jon !
All they had to do was create a unique character. That's what killed it.
What killed it was timing - Atari didn't have their Pac-Man port ready yet, and in the meantime people were buying Odyssey 2 systems just for K.C. Munchkin. Atari didn't even have to win the lawsuit, they just needed to abuse the law to make them stop selling K.C. Munchkin for some months. They lost at first, but then they got lucky, with a bad judgement in their favor. But winning the lawsuit was never the point.
It's telling that Atari didn't sue any of the MANY Pac-Man clones on more expensive computer systems, nor did they bother to sue any of the popular Pac-Man clones on consoles after they got their own Pac-Man port out. It was never about the merits (or lack thereof) of the case. It was strictly a business move to attack a competitor at a critical time.
Exactly this. The main character was a direct cheese wheel copy.
It's PacMan the same way lots of other clones are PacMan.
I really like your wording near the end, where you called it a "riff on PacMan," which is what it is, and not a copy. Just a variation, as many others were and would be. Atari didn't sue because they thought it was a copy. There were lots of copies/variations. They could have sued others too. They didn't. They didn't even sue any of the others after they won and were feeling confidant. Look at all the Space Invaders clones? Alien Invaders Plus was just as much a Space Invades copy as KC is a PacMan copy. Ripe to sue for that too!!! But they didn't sue, any of those. They sued because it was just before Atari was going to release their own version. It was all about market timing, not product.
I don't agree that they should have won the case personally. And I'd bet Magnavox could have taken the case up again and won. But it wasn't financially worth it.
And I really don't think this ended up being a landmark case, because it didn't slow down game clones at all... Lots more came out after this case... The case was flawed and people knew it.
But you are a die hard Atari guy, so I started this vid knowing where you would be on it. ;-)
As for fun, it's a fun game to play. But I think KCs Krazy Chase, the follow up, is better. Best game on the O2 IMHO, especially if you have The Voice module...
You may be wrong about your assumptions of my opinion. I understand and agree with Atari's decision to protect their investment, but I also think the ruling was ultimately wrong. And regardless of the outcome, this did help to establish the groundwork how video game copyright would be treated going forward. I appreciate you watching and taking the time to share your thoughts! 😁
My dad bought a used ti99 and kc munchkin cuz we couldnt afford a 5200 and $50 pacman game.
Ti99 didn't have KC Munchkin, but it did have Munchman - a really nice Pac-Man clone with small sprites and a distinctive white background look (most Pac-Man clones had a black background).
@@IsaacKuo yup that was it, thx it was a clone of a clone 😆
I played a fair amount of Munch Man on the TI at my friend's house around Middle School age. Wasn't that one reversed where you were painting the maze rather than clearing it?
@@GenXGrownUp yup ;)
Never understood why almost all O2 games only gave you one life..
More true to life? Seriously, though, you felt a greater sense of urgency to stay alive with no extras to spare.
To be fair the Atari 2600 version of Pac Man was so bad that it made KC Munchkin look pretty good. And Odyssey games came in cool boxes printed on foil - and they put more effort into the box art than the game itself. But the 2600 still had all the Activision games. And that's the real reason the Odyssey sucked. Imagine if Activision had made slightly better versions of their games for the Odyssey or ColecoVision or IntelliVision.
I recently got an Odyssey 2, and as a huge Pac-Man fan, this is my favorite game on the system.
I recommend KC's Crazy Chase - Pacman and a snake game mash-up
Somehow, over thirty years later, I still remember getting a crazy high score of 1972 on that game, incidentally, the same year I was born.
I remember playing KC Munchkin at my nextdoor neighbor's house when I was a kid. Ironically it was about 3000% better than the home port of Pac-Man I owned for the 2600! The only thing that sucked about the O2 was that the control stick couldn't return to center like the ones we were all used to.
You don't do much Commodore stuff. I've been addicted to this old game called Serpentine for Vic20 and C64. It's a cool maze snake game. Unfortunately it was only released in Europe so I never seen it as a kid. I actually found it on PCUAE collection, a USB loader front end for TheC64 and The400 mini.
Loved this game as a die hard Pac-man fan...The fact this had a maze editor put it way ahead of its time...I used to spend hours trying to recreate the maze from arcade Pac-man...Only to lose it when you turned off the console!...What brilliant times they were
If KC were a car, I think the game substantially removes itself from being Pac Man like. But then "Munchkin" doesn't make sense.
Loved this game and my Odyssey 2, Much better than Atari pac-man by far, creating your own mazes was great too.
Jon you need to check out Snakepit for the 400 mini. It's a tiny bit like pacman but quite different in a way I"m sure you'd like.
The Odyssey 2 was inferior to the 2600, yet it was massively superior to the released 2600 pacman.
I loved my Odyssey 2, even if it was weaker than the 2600. I would love an Odyssey 2 mini 😍
The virgin Atari 2600 Pac-Man vs. the chad Odyssey 2 KC Munchkin.
Personally, I think K.C.'s Krazy Chase! is the superior K.C. game.
You never owned an the Odyssey 2?!!! Bro!!!!!!!
KC was the bomb!!!