Tod Frye, out of all people, knows exactly how much work and creative effort it took to make that conversion happen. Getting two thumbs up from him is the greatest honor I can imagine.
Tod is a class act. Appreciating a (superior) reboot of his game and giving it two thumbs up. I've known a lot of programmers with egos as big as a planet who would have either ho-hummed it or found something to criticize. Two thumbs up for Tod.
I would be interested to know how long it took the AtariAge user DINTAR816 to create this version. Tod says he had 6 months to create his version, but he was under constant (I'm sure) pressure from upper management to have it completed by the Christmas holiday season.
Apparently Eugene Jarvis was told about the new RobotWars2634 for the 2600 by Champ Games and we was amazed as well. I think Eugene is a class act too. Never met him, but he sounds so cheerful and not full of himself.
There's a 4K version too. It has to leave a few arcade showy features out, but the main game looks similar other than elongated wafers and the flicker is still there, but 4k was the original cartridge size.
You know you're in for a real treat when a guy who programed the Pac-Man game for the Atari 2600 praises the homebrew version for the same system. What a hero.
For being so "depressed" by this Pac-Man port, Tod sure is enthusiastic about it. He is genuinely impressed and happy with this version. A lot of humility and respect. And he loves to have fun, too. 👍👍
I am still amazed at my luck for having worked with the great Tod Frye and the other geniuses assembled at early Atari. Tod is a gentleman and so much fun.
Whoever coded that 8K version should be beaming with pride after this awesome endorsement. I agree with Tod, this version of Pac-Man is amazing. It almost looks like the 5200 version.
Suggesting that if Atari management had been a bit more tactful, they could have focused more on making better games for the 2600 (which was still selling great at the time) and not have taken a bath with the 5200.
Tod has to be praised for what he achieved in the time and practical rom space available, as is the author of the new home brew for taking the 2600 to new grounds with this version. Would love to meet both one day.
Andrew Kaczrowski 4k was good but this ones the bomb! Incredible what the programmer squeezed out of the old VCS! If this was the version Atari released back when I was a kid, the kids woulda lost their skulls! Excellent!!!!
Tod, on those days you made a lot of children very happy with your Pacman version. I knew as a kid that having the exact replica of the game in our houses was impossible. You and pionners like you made me the person I'm today, I'm developer.
Hello AM R as for A.I. for ps1 can you please do Walt Disney World Quest Magical Racing tour and Chocobo racing? I wanna be able to see the game clear so it's easier to drive for me. I triple challenge you to do it. I have no problem buying the copies from you. Can you do A.I. and get them on discs for ps1? I'll be veryyy grateful. =) 💖🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹
The fact that he wonders why people cared about the layout of the level says a lot about, not him, but Atari and the time. Video games were still new. The idea seemed to have been, "Lets just get a Pac-Man game on our system. Just make a Pac-Man game"....not, "We need to faithfully re-create Pac-Man as close as possible, that's important for authenticity, take your time". lol
To quote Shigeru Miyamoto, "A late game is only late until it ships. A bad game is bad forever." Hell, I think Breath of the Wild is so great is in big part due to how Nintendo was willing to delay the game for two whole years just to make sure it was as awesome as they could make it.
@@amylee9092 I deleted my previous reply after re-watching this video. Pac-Man for the 2600 is objectively not a bad game. It's of its time and was the #1 selling cartridge on the system. It was fun for what it was, and many understood why it wasn't like the arcade. It would be interesting to see what Tod would've come up with if he had the luxury of more time and the direction to make a more faithful port. Considering the fast-paced competitive nature of the era, and the fact that this wasn't an original IP, I don't think Atari could've given him enough extra time even if they wanted to.
@@WishItWas1984 I experienced many disappointing Atari 2600 ports of arcade games during the 80s. Some I loved despite the short comings like Space Invaders and Asteroids. Some were meh, like Zaxxon. But Pac Man on the 2600 was the most disappointing of all. It was objectively horrible in terms of graphics, sound and game play. It is perennially disappointing.
Seeing this, is uthermotsaly cool! One nice thing about the retro "wave", is that Atari 2600 creators, that simply were forgotten after the videogame crash are now being rediscovered. I have the most respect for those people that created the games simply alone.
As a kid, I loved pacman on the VCS. Sure it was different to the arcade, but the sheer magic and joy of being able to play such games at home totally overcame any shortcomings. You really had to be there at the time to understand!
The initial exposure to mere blocks on a TV screen that could be moved around with an external controller was more fascinating than playing the same games on later consoles with advanced graphics.
I was there and found it dull. My first videogame console was an Odyssey pong system. That was more only marginally interesting compared to playing with toy soldiers or Hot Wheels cars. It took videogames a little while to get to interesting levels. Adventure, Pitfall...RPGs were my kryptonite, and once my father bought a Commodore 64 and I played the Ultima games and Bard's Tale I was in my element.
Being a KID back then - I wanted the HOME VERSION to be exactly like the ARCADE VERSION. But as time progressed I can understand now why sacrifices and decisions were made for the most part.
Friends and I in the UK loved Tod's version, we never expected the arcade version and it honestly never occurred to us to start criticising it. It was simply the VCS version of Pac-Man, and we loved it.
He shows in this video why Atari picked the wrong programmer (no disrespect) for Pac Man. He doesn't understand why the tunnel placement matters. Tod has repeatedly said Pac Man is 'not his favorite game" Had his version of Pac Man been released under a different name having to do with ghosts, it probably would have been almost as big. It's not that the game is bad, it's that it's not Pac Man.
respect and thanks to Tod, to build something from the scratch at that time - in a short amount of time is really more impressing to me than to improve something wich is already existing - nevertheless kudos to both versions ! a lot of skill was needed for both
I met Todd and had a brief conversation with him in 2022. He is a super nice guy and explained some of the constraints put on him by Atari management that made his job more difficult. I think the biggest thing though was that Atari was once again rushing to market, and even though he had more time to develop it than HSW had for E.T. he really wasn't given ample time. Also, look at the other games that had been released at that time.... programmers still had not figured out how to get the most out of the system yet. The original was what it was meant to be. This version is really great and fun to think about "what could have been." Glad to see this eventually happened, but I still believe Todd did a good job with all things considered.
I don't even care, I grew up with that guys version of PacMan in 1983 and I absolutely loved it. That was my favorite game, I loved Pac Man, anyway I could get it.
The problem with the original 2600 Pac-Man is not Todd's fault. He was limited to 2k and only had 6 or 8 weeks to work with. He did his best at the time. The game only sold well at the time because it became the in pack game in late 1982 along with Combat and Space Invaders.
Todd Frye Rocks! I wish I was there!Todd, please make an 8K version of Pac-Man, exactly as you would've made it in 1982, had you been given 8K to work with. God Bless!
What's odd is GC did a lot of what he's in awe of with Ms. Pac man (the monsters, the line drop comb up the side for the playfield dots). GC had a lot more headroom - double - and of course time to do region scans for the monsters. But GC did very under appreciated games if only because they came at the tail end of Warner-Atari.
I do too! It was the first video game I’d ever played, and I thought it was brilliant. It was really weird later on to hear that it was criticised - I couldn’t really understand the problem!
I was very unhappy with the original Pacman on the 2600.I respected the fact that Atari gave us something similar considering how underpowered the system its. This Pacman 8K its the real deal a sort of redemption from the past which Tod acknowledges very humble and graciously.
Two thumbs up for Tod. To be fair it took several coders using tools that Tod never had plus no deadline. It would have sold another several million consoles if this version was released back then.
Back in 1982, aged 12, when I got my second hand Atari 2600 with Pac Man, I thought that IS the original version. I never knew there was an arcade Pac Man. I played it until the cows came home. I didn't notice any flickering, or at least it didn't bother me.
Nice video! Besides being impressed with the Pac-Man 8K homebrew game Mr. Frye also gives some of his feelings on his original library port of the game, and how he would have liked to have done some things different with it if he could have. Thus I will be including a recommendation, and a link to your video on my channel's review video of the original Atari VCS/2600 Pac-Man port to help illustrate those points on Wednesday.
I was able to ask Tod Frye a question at one is the prge events (I've heard him talk there several times) What I heard was that he liked the game he made. It wasn't a prototype. He says they were all still figuring out how to make a home version, and what that meant. But it's important to understand that Frye made the game he wanted to make. He didn't think the weird maze, the wafers, the weird square fruit, the tunnels at the top or the flickering ghosts were a problem. He thought as long as you have a maze runner with things to eat and ghosts chasing you, it was Pac-Man. Who cares if the maze isn't blue with a black background? Orange is fine But here's the thing... Space invaders was a damn good home version, and was out before Pac-Man. And he did a pretty good version of Asteroids! So not everyone was "figuring it out" at the time. And space invaders still fun to play today. So is asteroids. But Frye's Pac-Man is not fun to play today. And I asked him about it. All he really did was drop a few snide comments about the guy who programmed Space Invaders for the VCS, and didn't really address my question. So I honestly don't know what to make of this guy. I think it's great that he's appreciative of the 8k miracle he's playing. But I can also hear in his voice the lifetime of sadness he's experienced at creating a game that disappointed so many people. I see a man who would like a do-over, but still doesn't really fully take responsibility... There is a part of him that just can't accept the failure. He still thinks his game is fun and doesn't fully understand why people didn't like it, and that's just really kind of sad.
The original Atari Pacman was rushed, too little rom, and just an utter debacle! If Tod had been given more time & resources and a better understanding of how beloved this game was I'm sure he would've done a better job! Blame corporate Atari's greed and impatience to get their hands on the money, not the programmer.
Russell Huneke well he worked for 6 months over the clock so it was still not so rush. RAM and the clunky dev environment and well the restrictions and less knowledge of tricks played a lot. It’s easy to do better with more ram and more knowledge in retrospective
It doesn't have more RAM, it is a larger ROM. Also, there is a very good 4k version now. Of course, they probably didn't do it in 6 months. Nevertheless, it was a total thumbing of the nose at Pac Man fans. Even after all these years he cannot understand why the tunnel needs to be on the sides and not the top and bottom.
tarstarkusz...I had A LOT of fun playing Pac-Man on my VCS as a kid. I knew it wasn’t going to be as good as the arcade BUT other arcade games were MORE closely resembled on the VCS. If he JUST had a blue maze...Pac-Man’s mouth moving in ALL directions...Pac-Man NOT flipping back to the (left/right forget) when eating ghosts/ONLY having ghosts being eaten with Pac-Man in “1” direction...&&&&&&&&...having the tunnels at the left/right of the screen...it would have been PERFECT. Ms. Pac-Man showed just a SHORT time later how it SHOULD have been done...plus had MULTIPLE mazes/fruit etc. That being said...STILL had SO MUCH FUN playing ATARI Pac-Man on the ATARI VCS with family & friends back then.
That's the thing, when you've got to try and duplicate (what was at the time) a legend in the making before a deadline, you've certainly got your hands full.
@@user-my7lt7nl5p There's an urban legend that when Tod Frye was programming Pac-Man for the 2600, he would walk on the walls in the hallways of Atari's offices, even to the point of him being able to turn corners.
He seems like a really cool guy. Honestly the original he created wasn't bad for what it was. It never really bothered me when I was younger. It was just Pac-man on atari.
I think Tod Frye gets too much flak over Pac-Man. I get it's different from the Arcade in terms of color scheme, maze layout and the like but it still captured the overall spirit of the game on a platform with only 128 bytes of ROM on a platform meant for little more than over-glorified Pong games and with only 4096 bytes of ROM to play with (anything more would've been expensive to produce). I played countless hours on the thing, was entertained by it, so I definitely felt I got my money's worth.
He also mentioned in a convention presentation that he wasn't trying to make 2600 Pac-Man as similar to the arcade game as possible. He was doing his own interpretation of the game for the 2600.There wasn't much precedent at the time regarding how console ports for arcade games should be handled. Should it be as close to the arcade as possible vs. it's on different hardware and therefore a different game inspired by the arcade that has the same title. It was also interesting to learn why the maze background was blue instead of black. Atari limited the use of black backgrounds to space games because screen burn-in was still a thing and black backgrounds caused burn-in to happen more quickly.
Could someone makes subtitles please? Since I have some troubles to understand sometimes conversation in english + the ambiant ruckus make to understand what he's saying difficult.
Well, his PM may not be his master piece, but if you take a look at the newly discovered complete Xevious 2600 you'll see that he knows how to make a great port/game.
+retrogamer1 I've studied his Xevious kernel, and found that he literally uses EVERY ONE OF THE 76 CYCLES AVAILABLE ON A LINE, ON EVERY LINE. Absolutely bat-#%@# crazy stuff.
So this is the man who took all my lawnmowing money back in the 80s for a piece of junk, then became a millionaire off the royalties. I was a 12 year old goof and I got it, but Todd still "just doesn't get it."
You might have us confused with another channel? This one didn't exist in the 90s, and we never had Atari interviews. Curious what channel you might be thinking of, though!
@@AtariAgeprobably. They were in my playlist beside this interview. They were a bunch of Stella at 20 interviews. I think they were from 1997. They were really nice to listen and learn from. ❤
That is the Commodore 1702. (FWIW, you can add an S-Video port on the back, hooked up to the Luma & Chroma RCA jacks on the back for a *much* better picture.) You'll have to ask on retro gaming forums for a monitor that will work with both PAL and NTSC. Some Commodore 1084S monitors will do both, as will the Sony KX-14CP1. (FWIW, you can add an analog RGB port and stereo sound jacks to a Sega Genesis for the best graphics and audio you'll ever see on one!) Hope this helps!
Front connectors are 2 RCA jacks for composite video and monaural sound. Back connectors are 3 RCA jacks for luminance and chrominance (2 component) video and monaural sound. 2 component is much clearer than composite- it is what S-video is, but this monitor predates the S-video connector. Toggle switch for the input is on the back.
This begs the question why Atari management didn't focus their efforts and finances on optimizing 2600 gameplay instead of rushing to production an advanced but ultimately doomed successor console.
Todd would of done better if he had some documentation. Oh, the executives had him produce a game in half the time. Time Warner was laser focus on $$, not a quality game.
If he had made Pac-Man like this in 1981 video game history would have been wildly different. No 1983 crash, no Nintendo dominating the market in the US.
I also can't help but wonder how the timeline would have been altered had this version been the one to hit shelves. This game was one of the first games to have people truly lining up at stores to get it on launch day. If this had been what they got it would have been wildly successful
I enjoyed the 2600 version that he developed. I understood the limitations of the Atari, and the time constraints he was under. However, I still never understood the color scheme. I heard that he picked those colors because Atari would not allow a black background or something like that, , but boy were they ugly.
@@small_ed Actually, to both points, it's true because Atari made it a 'rule' that black background applies only to their space theme games at the time.
I think all the really popular arcade games at the time should of been been bumped up to 8k Rom on the VCS, atleast, along with making it as authentic as possible. Instead Atari spent millions trying to get the rights to ET. When they could of spent much less on games based on popular books, or good, but slightly lesser known films. Galaxian got 8k,and it's a great port. Tod could of done better I think if they gave him more Rom, and let him make it more authentic.
He got stressed out making first pac man if only they had a Starbucks shop in the 80s he might have made pac man better for atari and Nintendo would have lost the console market.
Atari 2600 had too weak of a graphics chip to create a maze of the same size as the arcade version. Arcade version has width of 28, Atari 2600 maxes out at 20.
The Gmork yes and I think that is the point. He did not care or understand. Of course by time the obvios became fact and data. Still there was good and bad ports. And it shows that at that time a lot of people in the business did not understand gamers / consumers or their ow. Product.
It’s easy to forget that nobody cared about arcade accuracy. The players certainly didn’t care. There was no precedent. Nobody knew to care. It was all about making a pac-man game, a space invaders game, not the pac-man, not the space invaders. Arcade accuracy started to become a thing a few years in. In fact, that was Coleco Vision’s gimmick: arcade accurate games in your home.
Yeah, comed to the BS he said in "Once Upon Atari" it's pretty evident that with age comes admission that you just weren't that good of a game coder to begin with :P nuff said?
I would have asked if he could still do his famous wall walk. Apparently he was very tall and could spread his legs between walls and walk along them at Atari's HQ. Once whilst showing this off he cut his head open on a fire sprinkler! (Source: Atari Inc: Business Is Fun by Goldberg/Vendel)
Tod Frye, out of all people, knows exactly how much work and creative effort it took to make that conversion happen. Getting two thumbs up from him is the greatest honor I can imagine.
Tod is a class act. Appreciating a (superior) reboot of his game and giving it two thumbs up. I've known a lot of programmers with egos as big as a planet who would have either ho-hummed it or found something to criticize. Two thumbs up for Tod.
I would be interested to know how long it took the AtariAge user DINTAR816 to create this version. Tod says he had 6 months to create his version, but he was under constant (I'm sure) pressure from upper management to have it completed by the Christmas holiday season.
Apparently Eugene Jarvis was told about the new RobotWars2634 for the 2600 by Champ Games and we was amazed as well. I think Eugene is a class act too. Never met him, but he sounds so cheerful and not full of himself.
Absolutely. Completely humble and seemingly genuinely impressed and sincere in his praise. As you said, total class act.
It's poor that it has flicker and it even uses 8k. Frye did better for the time
There's a 4K version too. It has to leave a few arcade showy features out, but the main game looks similar other than elongated wafers and the flicker is still there, but 4k was the original cartridge size.
You know you're in for a real treat when a guy who programed the Pac-Man game for the Atari 2600 praises the homebrew version for the same system. What a hero.
For being so "depressed" by this Pac-Man port, Tod sure is enthusiastic about it. He is genuinely impressed and happy with this version. A lot of humility and respect. And he loves to have fun, too. 👍👍
I am still amazed at my luck for having worked with the great Tod Frye and the other geniuses assembled at early Atari. Tod is a gentleman and so much fun.
Cool!
You should've seen his port of Xevious, which never released. It's amazing for the hardware!
Xevious and Robotron are my all-time fav coin ops. Would love to play Tod’s version! Schazaam
Whoever coded that 8K version should be beaming with pride after this awesome endorsement. I agree with Tod, this version of Pac-Man is amazing. It almost looks like the 5200 version.
Suggesting that if Atari management had been a bit more tactful, they could have focused more on making better games for the 2600 (which was still selling great at the time) and not have taken a bath with the 5200.
Cool how Tod is amazed by the new version. He's a hero for having programmed Pac Man in such a short amount of time.
Tod has to be praised for what he achieved in the time and practical rom space available, as is the author of the new home brew for taking the 2600 to new grounds with this version.
Would love to meet both one day.
+Bobby Hill troll.....
Andrew Kaczrowski 4k was good but this ones the bomb! Incredible what the programmer squeezed out of the old VCS! If this was the version Atari released back when I was a kid, the kids woulda lost their skulls! Excellent!!!!
Tod, on those days you made a lot of children very happy with your Pacman version. I knew as a kid that having the exact replica of the game in our houses was impossible. You and pionners like you made me the person I'm today, I'm developer.
Hi what can you do development wise with games? :)
Hello AM R as for A.I. for ps1 can you please do Walt Disney World Quest Magical Racing tour and Chocobo racing? I wanna be able to see the game clear so it's easier to drive for me. I triple challenge you to do it. I have no problem buying the copies from you. Can you do A.I. and get them on discs for ps1? I'll be veryyy grateful. =) 💖🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹
The fact that he wonders why people cared about the layout of the level says a lot about, not him, but Atari and the time. Video games were still new. The idea seemed to have been, "Lets just get a Pac-Man game on our system. Just make a Pac-Man game"....not, "We need to faithfully re-create Pac-Man as close as possible, that's important for authenticity, take your time". lol
To quote Shigeru Miyamoto, "A late game is only late until it ships. A bad game is bad forever." Hell, I think Breath of the Wild is so great is in big part due to how Nintendo was willing to delay the game for two whole years just to make sure it was as awesome as they could make it.
@@amylee9092 I deleted my previous reply after re-watching this video. Pac-Man for the 2600 is objectively not a bad game. It's of its time and was the #1 selling cartridge on the system. It was fun for what it was, and many understood why it wasn't like the arcade.
It would be interesting to see what Tod would've come up with if he had the luxury of more time and the direction to make a more faithful port. Considering the fast-paced competitive nature of the era, and the fact that this wasn't an original IP, I don't think Atari could've given him enough extra time even if they wanted to.
@@WishItWas1984 I experienced many disappointing Atari 2600 ports of arcade games during the 80s. Some I loved despite the short comings like Space Invaders and Asteroids. Some were meh, like Zaxxon. But Pac Man on the 2600 was the most disappointing of all. It was objectively horrible in terms of graphics, sound and game play. It is perennially disappointing.
Seeing this, is uthermotsaly cool!
One nice thing about the retro "wave", is that Atari 2600 creators, that simply were forgotten after the videogame crash are now being rediscovered. I have the most respect for those people that created the games simply alone.
A genius that can compliment other programmers. He has that Steve Woz outlook.
Pac man was my first home console game i had. I played hours and hours the only game i had with so much joy! Oh man, the nostalgia!
THANK YOU TOD!!!
As a kid, I loved pacman on the VCS. Sure it was different to the arcade, but the sheer magic and joy of being able to play such games at home totally overcame any shortcomings. You really had to be there at the time to understand!
Totally agree!
The initial exposure to mere blocks on a TV screen that could be moved around with an external controller was more fascinating than playing the same games on later consoles with advanced graphics.
Pac Man on the 2600 was a hot pile of garbage. Any kid who wasn't disappointed by it was lying to themselves.
I was there and found it dull. My first videogame console was an Odyssey pong system. That was more only marginally interesting compared to playing with toy soldiers or Hot Wheels cars. It took videogames a little while to get to interesting levels. Adventure, Pitfall...RPGs were my kryptonite, and once my father bought a Commodore 64 and I played the Ultima games and Bard's Tale I was in my element.
I still love his original version but its a crying shame that corporate greed stopped him from making a better version.
Being a KID back then - I wanted the HOME VERSION to be exactly like the ARCADE VERSION. But as time progressed I can understand now why sacrifices and decisions were made for the most part.
I have a lot of respect for that man
Oh fuck off SMH!!!
+Bobby Hill troll........
Alex me too
Whaaaaattt? Didn't you fucking listen to him? 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
@@juanbadilla2232 ♂♀♂♀♂♀♂♀
Friends and I in the UK loved Tod's version, we never expected the arcade version and it honestly never occurred to us to start criticising it. It was simply the VCS version of Pac-Man, and we loved it.
If Atari management would have let Frye use a black background it would have helped
Would have looked more legit but I cant say the Blue background bothered me back in the day. Still baffling the silly reason they wouldn't allow it.
This is absolutely incredible.
Tod is awesome! we love all versions of pacman! his version even though not true to the arcade is true to our memories! a must have version for sure.
I enjoyed Tod Frye's Pacman. I respect the pioneers that paved the way.
This is very cool to see. Humble, appreciative, complimentary. Seems like a really cool guy.
He shows in this video why Atari picked the wrong programmer (no disrespect) for Pac Man. He doesn't understand why the tunnel placement matters. Tod has repeatedly said Pac Man is 'not his favorite game"
Had his version of Pac Man been released under a different name having to do with ghosts, it probably would have been almost as big. It's not that the game is bad, it's that it's not Pac Man.
respect and thanks to Tod, to build something from the scratch at that time - in a short amount of time is really more impressing to me than to improve something wich is already existing - nevertheless kudos to both versions ! a lot of skill was needed for both
what a great guy
Agreed. Atari programmers of both eras by and large are wonderful people
An incredibly nice man when you meet him. He makes me feel like a pill for hating his game
I enjoyed his version of Pac man on the Atari and when I fire it up I always have a bash on the 1st Pacman though I have Ms and Junior too.
Tod is a legend!!!???
This is incredible. Tod is an amazing dude
I met Todd and had a brief conversation with him in 2022. He is a super nice guy and explained some of the constraints put on him by Atari management that made his job more difficult. I think the biggest thing though was that Atari was once again rushing to market, and even though he had more time to develop it than HSW had for E.T. he really wasn't given ample time. Also, look at the other games that had been released at that time.... programmers still had not figured out how to get the most out of the system yet. The original was what it was meant to be. This version is really great and fun to think about "what could have been." Glad to see this eventually happened, but I still believe Todd did a good job with all things considered.
I don't even care, I grew up with that guys version of PacMan in 1983 and I absolutely loved it. That was my favorite game, I loved Pac Man, anyway I could get it.
Very nice guy. Cheers!
he seems like a cool guy.
+colin8696908 Watch the documentary "Once Upon Atari" by Howard Scott Warshaw. You will learn some great early Atari stuff.
That's so cool! Don't hesitate to make more videos like this.
Cant wait for this to come out on a cart.
same
The problem with the original 2600 Pac-Man is not Todd's fault. He was limited to 2k and only had 6 or 8 weeks to work with. He did his best at the time.
The game only sold well at the time because it became the in pack game in late 1982 along with Combat and Space Invaders.
Todd Frye Rocks! I wish I was there!Todd, please make an 8K version of Pac-Man, exactly as you would've made it in 1982, had you been given 8K to work with. God Bless!
What's odd is GC did a lot of what he's in awe of with Ms. Pac man (the monsters, the line drop comb up the side for the playfield dots). GC had a lot more headroom - double - and of course time to do region scans for the monsters. But GC did very under appreciated games if only because they came at the tail end of Warner-Atari.
As a matter of fact, I really dig the old despised version of Pac Man on the Atari 2600.
I do too! It was the first video game I’d ever played, and I thought it was brilliant. It was really weird later on to hear that it was criticised - I couldn’t really understand the problem!
@@alasyon My thoughts exactly!
I was very unhappy with the original Pacman on the 2600.I respected the fact that Atari gave us something similar considering how underpowered the system its. This Pacman 8K its the real deal a sort of redemption from the past which Tod acknowledges very humble and graciously.
I love this guy.
Played this version on Stella and Man, its fabulous! :)
*Did anybody ever get the gitch going thru the portals to where pacman would zoom across the speed super fast??*
I have a lot of respect for this dude
He still seems like a fun crazy guy. I wonder if he still climbs up hallway walls?
Two thumbs up for Tod. To be fair it took several coders using tools that Tod never had plus no deadline. It would have sold another several million consoles if this version was released back then.
Back in 1982, aged 12, when I got my second hand Atari 2600 with Pac Man, I thought that IS the original version. I never knew there was an arcade Pac Man.
I played it until the cows came home. I didn't notice any flickering, or at least it didn't bother me.
Nice video! Besides being impressed with the Pac-Man 8K homebrew game Mr. Frye also gives some of his feelings on his original library port of the game, and how he would have liked to have done some things different with it if he could have. Thus I will be including a recommendation, and a link to your video on my channel's review video of the original Atari VCS/2600 Pac-Man port to help illustrate those points on Wednesday.
What a class act.
We need to encourage these retired wizards to go into education. That passion is so needed in the classroom.
I was able to ask Tod Frye a question at one is the prge events (I've heard him talk there several times)
What I heard was that he liked the game he made. It wasn't a prototype. He says they were all still figuring out how to make a home version, and what that meant. But it's important to understand that Frye made the game he wanted to make. He didn't think the weird maze, the wafers, the weird square fruit, the tunnels at the top or the flickering ghosts were a problem. He thought as long as you have a maze runner with things to eat and ghosts chasing you, it was Pac-Man. Who cares if the maze isn't blue with a black background? Orange is fine
But here's the thing... Space invaders was a damn good home version, and was out before Pac-Man. And he did a pretty good version of Asteroids! So not everyone was "figuring it out" at the time. And space invaders still fun to play today. So is asteroids. But Frye's Pac-Man is not fun to play today. And I asked him about it.
All he really did was drop a few snide comments about the guy who programmed Space Invaders for the VCS, and didn't really address my question.
So I honestly don't know what to make of this guy. I think it's great that he's appreciative of the 8k miracle he's playing. But I can also hear in his voice the lifetime of sadness he's experienced at creating a game that disappointed so many people. I see a man who would like a do-over, but still doesn't really fully take responsibility... There is a part of him that just can't accept the failure. He still thinks his game is fun and doesn't fully understand why people didn't like it, and that's just really kind of sad.
Just came from the 1997 interview. Could barely recognize Tod Frye.
The original Atari Pacman was rushed, too little rom, and just an utter debacle! If Tod had been given more time & resources and a better understanding of how beloved this game was I'm sure he would've done a better job! Blame corporate Atari's greed and impatience to get their hands on the money, not the programmer.
Russell Huneke well he worked for 6 months over the clock so it was still not so rush. RAM and the clunky dev environment and well the restrictions and less knowledge of tricks played a lot. It’s easy to do better with more ram and more knowledge in retrospective
It doesn't have more RAM, it is a larger ROM. Also, there is a very good 4k version now. Of course, they probably didn't do it in 6 months.
Nevertheless, it was a total thumbing of the nose at Pac Man fans. Even after all these years he cannot understand why the tunnel needs to be on the sides and not the top and bottom.
tarstarkusz...I had A LOT of fun playing Pac-Man on my VCS as a kid. I knew it wasn’t going to be as good as the arcade BUT other arcade games were MORE closely resembled on the VCS. If he JUST had a blue maze...Pac-Man’s mouth moving in ALL directions...Pac-Man NOT flipping back to the (left/right forget) when eating ghosts/ONLY having ghosts being eaten with Pac-Man in “1” direction...&&&&&&&&...having the tunnels at the left/right of the screen...it would have been PERFECT.
Ms. Pac-Man showed just a SHORT time later how it SHOULD have been done...plus had MULTIPLE mazes/fruit etc.
That being said...STILL had SO MUCH FUN playing ATARI Pac-Man on the ATARI VCS with family & friends back then.
Space invaders and ms pac man turned out much better.
@@litjellyfish he shouldn’t have made it a 2 player game
The original 2600 version of Pac-man was one of my favorites as a kid. Probably second place below Pitfall.
That's the thing, when you've got to try and duplicate (what was at the time) a legend in the making before a deadline, you've certainly got your hands full.
And he seems to be a nice guy :)
The real question is: Can he still walk on walls?
What is this a reference to?
You can still see the sprinkler wound
@@user-my7lt7nl5p There's an urban legend that when Tod Frye was programming Pac-Man for the 2600, he would walk on the walls in the hallways of Atari's offices, even to the point of him being able to turn corners.
Tod, I want my money back !!!
Todd is great!!!!!
He seems like a really cool guy. Honestly the original he created wasn't bad for what it was. It never really bothered me when I was younger. It was just Pac-man on atari.
I think Tod Frye gets too much flak over Pac-Man. I get it's different from the Arcade in terms of color scheme, maze layout and the like but it still captured the overall spirit of the game on a platform with only 128 bytes of ROM on a platform meant for little more than over-glorified Pong games and with only 4096 bytes of ROM to play with (anything more would've been expensive to produce). I played countless hours on the thing, was entertained by it, so I definitely felt I got my money's worth.
He also mentioned in a convention presentation that he wasn't trying to make 2600 Pac-Man as similar to the arcade game as possible. He was doing his own interpretation of the game for the 2600.There wasn't much precedent at the time regarding how console ports for arcade games should be handled. Should it be as close to the arcade as possible vs. it's on different hardware and therefore a different game inspired by the arcade that has the same title. It was also interesting to learn why the maze background was blue instead of black. Atari limited the use of black backgrounds to space games because screen burn-in was still a thing and black backgrounds caused burn-in to happen more quickly.
Could someone makes subtitles please? Since I have some troubles to understand sometimes conversation in english + the ambiant ruckus make to understand what he's saying difficult.
Imagine a past where this is what we got, and Atari stayed on top without crashing the video game market!
Tod is great!!!!!
Well, his PM may not be his master piece, but if you take a look at the newly discovered complete Xevious 2600 you'll see that he knows how to make a great port/game.
+retrogamer1 I've studied his Xevious kernel, and found that he literally uses EVERY ONE OF THE 76 CYCLES AVAILABLE ON A LINE, ON EVERY LINE. Absolutely bat-#%@# crazy stuff.
Has he seen the 4k version?
atari really restrained him, not (tod frye) his fault.
Ah, there's the culprit!
So this is the man who took all my lawnmowing money back in the 80s for a piece of junk, then became a millionaire off the royalties. I was a 12 year old goof and I got it, but Todd still "just doesn't get it."
Isn't this from the documentary?
What happened to all the Atari interviews in this channel from the late 90s? 😞
You might have us confused with another channel? This one didn't exist in the 90s, and we never had Atari interviews. Curious what channel you might be thinking of, though!
@@AtariAgeprobably. They were in my playlist beside this interview. They were a bunch of Stella at 20 interviews. I think they were from 1997. They were really nice to listen and learn from. ❤
Legend!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why Not Frye? ❤ 👍👍
I love the home brew, but did they ever release a 4K version? Because that's all Todd had to work with.
What kind of monitor is that ? I am looking for a small colour screen for my old consoles that full support PAL and NTSC.
That is the Commodore 1702. (FWIW, you can add an S-Video port on the back, hooked up to the Luma & Chroma RCA jacks on the back for a *much* better picture.) You'll have to ask on retro gaming forums for a monitor that will work with both PAL and NTSC. Some Commodore 1084S monitors will do both, as will the Sony KX-14CP1. (FWIW, you can add an analog RGB port and stereo sound jacks to a Sega Genesis for the best graphics and audio you'll ever see on one!)
Hope this helps!
Front connectors are 2 RCA jacks for composite video and monaural sound. Back connectors are 3 RCA jacks for luminance and chrominance (2 component) video and monaural sound. 2 component is much clearer than composite- it is what S-video is, but this monitor predates the S-video connector. Toggle switch for the input is on the back.
So cool
This begs the question why Atari management didn't focus their efforts and finances on optimizing 2600 gameplay instead of rushing to production an advanced but ultimately doomed successor console.
well done 🙂
Todd would of done better if he had some documentation. Oh, the executives had him produce a game in half the time. Time Warner was laser focus on $$, not a quality game.
If he had made Pac-Man like this in 1981 video game history would have been wildly different. No 1983 crash, no Nintendo dominating the market in the US.
I also can't help but wonder how the timeline would have been altered had this version been the one to hit shelves. This game was one of the first games to have people truly lining up at stores to get it on launch day. If this had been what they got it would have been wildly successful
Berzerk had blue walls and a black background. Maybe they didn't want it to look too much like Berzerk.
I enjoyed the 2600 version that he developed. I understood the limitations of the Atari, and the time constraints he was under. However, I still never understood the color scheme. I heard that he picked those colors because Atari would not allow a black background or something like that, , but boy were they ugly.
Wasn't a problem with Space Invaders ;-)
@@small_ed Actually, to both points, it's true because Atari made it a 'rule' that black background applies only to their space theme games at the time.
Why Frye?
Hi that's AWESOME! :)
Is this version already for sale?
I think all the really popular arcade games at the time should of been been bumped up to 8k Rom on the VCS, atleast, along with making it as authentic as possible. Instead Atari spent millions trying to get the rights to ET. When they could of spent much less on games based on popular books, or good, but slightly lesser known films. Galaxian got 8k,and it's a great port. Tod could of done better I think if they gave him more Rom, and let him make it more authentic.
Holy cow this is cool :)
He got stressed out making first pac man if only they had a Starbucks shop in the 80s he might have made pac man better for atari and Nintendo would have lost the console market.
Robert M Perish the thought!
He is about that psilocybin
The 8 bit version was very good, but this was not y type of game.
Sounds like he really doesn't care about arcade accuracy.
It feels like he's like "I can make the maze any way I want!" Well then it's not Pac-Man!
Atari 2600 had too weak of a graphics chip to create a maze of the same size as the arcade version. Arcade version has width of 28, Atari 2600 maxes out at 20.
vytah I think it’s not about the power pill resolution but the actual maze layout. That is correct in this version
The Gmork yes and I think that is the point. He did not care or understand. Of course by time the obvios became fact and data. Still there was good and bad ports. And it shows that at that time a lot of people in the business did not understand gamers / consumers or their ow. Product.
It’s easy to forget that nobody cared about arcade accuracy. The players certainly didn’t care. There was no precedent. Nobody knew to care. It was all about making a pac-man game, a space invaders game, not the pac-man, not the space invaders. Arcade accuracy started to become a thing a few years in. In fact, that was Coleco Vision’s gimmick: arcade accurate games in your home.
Yeah, comed to the BS he said in "Once Upon Atari" it's pretty evident that with age comes admission that you just weren't that good of a game coder to begin with :P
nuff said?
I would have asked if he could still do his famous wall walk. Apparently he was very tall and could spread his legs between walls and walk along them at Atari's HQ. Once whilst showing this off he cut his head open on a fire sprinkler! (Source: Atari Inc: Business Is Fun by Goldberg/Vendel)
according to once up on atari he used to climb the walls