new pacman 2600 8k version
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- Опубликовано: 11 ноя 2024
- This is a video of the latest update of the version of pacman 8k for the Atari 2600, made with the emulator "stella" and capturing screen with "VirtualDub".
For more information and to follow the development of this project see this link:
atariage.com/fo...
Wow what an improvement from the original. If this is what they had put out back then it would have been insane
What were they not thinking?????
@PianoMan-hx3ev That there would have been no need for the ill-fated 5200. Granted, the technology to produce this level of graphical quality on the 2600 likely was lacking at the time, but Atari certainly could have developed a better quality product. Regardless, everyone in '81 was willing to overpay for the original!
It also would have been prohibitively expensive to manufacture, which is why the programmer was given so little space. Pac-Man would now be infamous as "the $100 cartridge that Atari tried to sell" or something along those lines. :)
You know, I see these homebrews and it gets me so mad. Don't get me wrong, these ports are awesome, but it shows what could have been. That's what bugs me the most. A little more development time and 'giving a crap' back then might've saved the company. This port is breathtaking.
Actually original port really wasn't going to be lazy the programmer gave the original atari version was prototype but atari just happened to release just that prototype.
Seven Seas17 Amen.
The leading cause of games turning out poorly back then was a combination of publisher tinkering and time crunches. A perfect example would be Doom on the 32X. They had John Carmack himself making the port. It could have been almost as good as the Jaguar vesion, but Sega demanded it be ready by the hardware's launch.
Developing homebrew isn't the same as doing it back in 1980. You have all the time in the world to develop it, you can do years of iterations, you can develop on VASTLY superior hardware, you can test very complex algorithms because they've all been discovered 15 years ago, etc, etc, etc.
And it was a lot more frustrating and difficult to work on these limited machines than you can possibly know.
fuzzywzhe it would of been possible still. Look at the Ms Pac Man port for the 2600. That was excellent. Sure it would have taken alot more time to develop, but it would have been worth it in the end. It could have saved the company.
To stuff all this in 8k is simply astounding...simply an incredible accomplishment.
Fantastic accomplishment, amazing what can be done with the old 2600! I especially like the audio, very close to the original.
Pac-Man
Pac
Just downloaded the Rom. Amazing. It was a pleasure to play it. Though its about 30 years late, easily one of the best Atari 2600 efforts ever!
Great map, sound, and to me, the most impressive thing is how good the ghosts look, even with two on the same line. I would like to know how the programmer achieved that! When this was going on, I was programming in Z-80 Assembly, which is what the arcade Pacman was rendered on. All good wishes!
Holy crap this is amazing
Damn, the sound of the ghosts turning blue are EXACTLY like the arcade version! If only the official port was like this.
Sensational! Thank you for all your hard work and dedication, it's a great accomplishment. Namco should pay you to make more classic arcade games for the Atari 2600.
This is a significant improvement over the original 2600 version. It's amazing how far a little extra development can take a crummy game and make it a great game.
tocksin I would not say “a little” ;)
I often wondered if they made the 2600 version of pacman bad on purpose to give the 5200 a selling point. Because if pacman looked liked this back in the 2600 day then alot of people would have said 'why buy a 5200 whn games look like this for the 2600', in my opinion this looks, sounds, and plays better than the 5200 version. Not to mention playing it on a way better controller too.
+Imax Junior Pacman came out 2 years before the Atari 5200.
Pacman for the Atari 2600 and the Atari 5200 came out the same year for those systems in 1982.
Oh, you're right. I read the discontinuation date instead of the release date.
+Imax Junior
I don't think so. The 2600 is far less capable than the 5200. The whole game had to fit in 4k rom. And you only had 128 bytes of ram for the game. Check out how the 2600 runs. It's amazing they could get that quality on the machine. And frankly. I was around 13 when it came out and I remember spending hours playing the thing as bad as it was. Back then we didn't have much.
Tod Frye,lead programer, was given a limited time to produce the game.That's the reason it came out,very sub par.
This updated Pac Man also makes me so mad. You see what can happen if you put some time and effort into it you get a better product for your customers, instead of returns back to the store. Nice Work whoever you are that programed this nice piece of work. and not rushed to meet a deadline for a ATARI CEO. Thanks Bro.
FROSTY HIGHWAY also his monthly salary was not depending on it. Nor was the bonus tied to the sales either. The programmer had his share in the bad port.
So yes. More time and effort would have bred good. Not as much time and effort as this would have been realistic. But they could have skipped the release window and give. It at least 3-6 months more and trust in that Pac-Man fever would last.
This is a beautiful game... Amazing what can be achieved after 37 years of accumulated knowledge about the 2600! Now someone re-do Kangaroo for me!
Agreed! Kangaroo was pretty good for the 2600, but a remake would be great!
Yes please! I loved playing Kangaroo!
I remember all the hype about Pac-Man coming to the Atari VCS. How excited we all were to think that we were going to be able to play Pac-Man...the arcade game...at HOME 🏠!!! This is what we were expecting, a game that actually resembled Pac-Man: the maze is correct, ghost's are the right colors, it sounds like Pac-Man, the bonus items are correct, and there's even onscreen scoring. This looks great, a home run. Thanks for the gameplay my friend! 👍 👍
This is the way it had to be back in the day!!!
You don't need s atari 5200 or atari 7800 to play a good version of pacman on it,this game proves that even the 8bit atari 2600 is just good enough to do that.
That's 4 bit 2600.
actually atari 2600 had 8 bit processor and nes, 7800 and sms were just beefed up versions of 8 bit processors.
No Bob, it isn't. The 2600 is an 8-bit machine.
rubberstack not just that all use more or less the same one the 6502
2600 is no more 4-bit than the 5200, 7800, C64, BBC, Apple ][, NES, etc. whose CPUs ran the exact same instruction set (slightly gimped in the NES' case). It's exactly as the others are, 8-bit.
The sound effects are great
Release this on cartridge already! I want to buy a copy!
Just about hit the sound dead on to the arcade version.
I want this PAC-MAN 8K for my Atari 2600 as soon as possible, this is what I really had desired since the early 1980s and I really want it now!
How am I only just hearing about this?
Wonder if it has the split screen bug in deliberately.
Atari could have saved millions of dollars by not making 5200. And adding more memory in the games to make them more true to the arcade. But the owner was money greedy and too stingy to spend a few more dollars to make it happen and terrible business decisions!!
Age old tale in business: not spending money is often how you loose most of it.
Jimmy Biggs I agree. Still more memory would not improve games so much in most cases. Better yes. Arcade good. Often not. Remember this game is done over a long time with a lot better dev tools and knowledge of tricks today
5200 needed compatibility with the 8-bit computers, and a way to use 2600 joysticks.
Really, it just needed to be the 7800 with a POKEY chip.
The sound alone is impressive! I guess I can see why Atari cheaped out originally and only went with a 2K rom (or was it 4K?), but clearly doubling the capacity with some bank switching and not programming in eye and ear killing colors and sound could have made for a decent port back in the day. I used to deliberately play my copy in B&W and with the sound off as it was just headache inducing to do otherwise.
So close to perfection. Just some tweaks to the sound... like making the frequency of the death spiral sound match the original (currently too high), same deal with the music obviously. Take advantage of both voices in some instances (death, extra life) to add harmonics to change the sound of the voices and force it closer to the arcade. That sort of stuff. Some sounds, like the ghost siren and especially the power-up mode, are so close to the arcade that I still can't believe this is really the 2600.
Yes, it's a Master Piece! The last note from the start Melody is one or a half tone too high, beside that it's perfect!
Can't believe it still hasn't come out on cart! Maybe Atariage has something new and secret!
In fairness to atari, pacman 8k is witchcraft. the 2600 was designed to have no more than 3 moving sprites on screen (like pong). this is 70s hardware. It's is beyond impressive, its insane.
I still remember how disappointed I was the first time I played 2600 pacman though, it's a very unique brand of disappointment
Crystal Castles made me feel like that.
This version of Pacman, Space Rocks and Donkey Kong VCS on my modded 7800 is the nazz.
3:32, shoutout to the person who made this that had to put the intermissions in while the 2600 didn’t have any.
If only Atari took their time with Pac-Man back in the day, they could’ve produce something like this. Then they might not have suffered as badly financially as they did.
Wow! That *is* beautiful!
Really truly incredible.
This Is Why The Atari Empire Toppled. With This Darn Game. They Made It Terrible, Because They Thought Their Empire Of Theirs Was Made Of Steel. But It Was Not. It Was Made Of Wood, Rotting Wood. If They Had Actually Cared To Not Half-Ass It, They Might Have Still Been Here Today.
Miles Flaherty lol no not with this game. But with lot of games with low quality.
This actually sold pretty well.
The most distracting thing to me about this otherwise near-perfect port is that the waka-waka rate cuts in half when eating dots horizontally. Surely it could be tweaked to play two waka-wakas when eating a dot while moving horizontally.
There are dots for eyes but lines for pellets still? Can't make round yellow pellets?
If you have round yellow pellets, which would require using sprites, what are you going to draw Pacman and the ghosts with?
@@arlasoft guess you have a point but I'm sure a coder could find a loophole , but this is way better so I'm happy
There is just a certain innocence with old Atari graphics!
No.
Great game, but it helps to keep perspective. First, this programmer had all the time he needed to get it right. Back in the day, publishers were rushing games out . Second, this is 8k. Doesn't sound like much for a cart, but most carts were 4k or less back then. Heck, the Vic-20 computer released only 2 years prior only had 5k. ;-) They could have done 8k, but it would have significantly increased the price. And lastly, programmers today have better tools and information. This is awesome, but I don't think we could realistically have expected this in 1982 as a 2600 cart. Now, have you seen Pacman 4k? :-)
In 1983, Ms. Pac-Man was released on the 2600, and it was an excellent port. Maybe a decent Pac-Man game was not realistic in 1982, but it sure was possible in 1983.
@@originalfred66 Yep, more like the Pacman 4k released recently. Just shows what you can do when given the proper time to develop the game.
If this had been done in 82, I wouldn't have needed to buy an 800
VERY impressive! I wish i had this when I was a little kid :). Wasn't created yet but, I wish! One thing I noticed - Why are the dots still lines like in the actual 2600 version of Pac Man? Is this some strange Atari 2600 limitation?
If memory serves, because of cpu and tia timing, some screen sections would not be drawn so the processing power could be used elsewhere.
Showing black lines in the middle of the map is more cleverly done than on the edge of the screen like in Ms Pac Man and others.
Also, in 1981, Atari had an edict that only space games could have a black background, hence the 2600 Pac Man having blue...
Are we ever gonna see the cart????
The Atari 2600 maximum ROM size is 32K. The original Pac Man was forced to fit on a cheap 4K ROM to save shekels. The programmer originally wanted 8K to make the sounds correct and add animated fruit. The rest is history. So my question is....would a 16K or 32K ROM allow for the playfield maze to be even more accurate?
This machine obviously had untapped potential before its demise by the greedy ones.
The Dollar Guy no. Even the 4K version is good. No more ram helps here.
The original packman would still have been bad even with 8k for the developer did not understood Pac-Man.
8k would just have added a bit more graphics frames and sound. And reduced the ghost flicker. Nothing else.
8k chips were very new at the time. Why Atari didn't take the risk as most people agree that, at the time, the risk would have been negligible... but the 8k size was new and Atari did mass-produce far more 4k carts, and demanded a 2-player mode...
the bast part is that i noticed that the ai for the ghost is the original one, what?, i have way to much free time
Very cool! Although what about the multiplayer?
The original 2600 game was decent, and the programmer (Todd Frye?) had limited time to develop the minimum viable product, and a more limited ROM size. He did miracles under the limitations.
If this had been the release in 1982, all of us would have flunked out of school!
If this is what came out in 1981 Atari might still be around today...
I had that exact game!
🎼 Memories🎵🎶.....
I would have loved that!
Jeez after all the effort to make this they show it in ugly distorted stretch o vision with a 4:3 picture s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d to fill a 16:9 widescreen, the way stupid people think they've turned SD into HD.
How you do Pac Man on the 2600. Really shows just how bad the official release is.
How does this sound so good? Is that a TIA or does the cart have a Pokey in it or something?
what Pacman should have been. Would this have prevented the industry form going kaput? hell no
their E.T. game caused the crash of 1983
It clearly shows on the intro screen that the 2600 can display dots instead of the bulky flat lines that replace the arcade version. Makes no sense.
It makes perfect sense. The dots are drawn on the intro screen using sprites. Because the screen is static and spaced out, you can time things just right to draw the ghost, then the dots, then the text, all using re-programmed sprites. During the game, the sprites are being used at maximum capacity to draw Pacman and the ghosts, so the pellets have to be drawn using the playfield, which only has a resolution of 40 per scanline.
The 2600 display has be drawn in real-time. If you used sprites for pellets, by the time you'd calculated if a given pellet needed to be drawn or not, the beam would already be half-way across the screen.
I wonder why THIS VERSION didn't make it in production in 1982. I would wonder how Ms. Pac-Man and Jr. Pac-Man would look like in that format.
No "pack-woy" when eating ghosts or 'bank bank bank' when eating pellets? Hmm.. If you know the story you know that we got the prototype version of the game so they could ship it out for a deadline.. if they had merely waited I believe the quality would have been like this.
However this would have required the use of an additional sound chip in the cartridge itself, raising the cost of it. Atari 2600 itself cannot play these sounds.
Why Atari would've make this version of Pac-Man in the 1st place? Instead of the "Lost-In-Space" version.
incredible! :D
Any plans for a Ms. Pac Man 8k?
Would love to see that along with Super Pac-Man and Jr. Pac-Man.
Why? Ms.Pac-Man was/is AWESOME for the ATARI VCS. I haven’t played it for years & now get it & the Lynx version confused...BUT...maybe adding the cut scenes...if they aren’t in the game?(I know they are on the Lynx version)
Is their a reason the "dots" were small lines instead of squares?
Yes, there is a reason, and it has to do with the way the Atari 2600 works. I will try to explain it for you.
The Atari 2600 draws the screen one horizontal line at a time, and you only have 6 objects to use to draw things on each line. You have 2 sprite objects which are 8 pixels wide, and these are used to draw pacman, the ghosts, and the fruit. There are 2 bullet objects and 1 ball object, which can each only draw a single dot, so if you used these to draw the dots, you could only show 3 at a time in each row and the dots would flicker horribly, so instead these are used to draw the power pills. The only other option is to use the playfield object, which is 20 (very stretched) pixels wide (copied or mirrored to make it look 40 pixels wide).
The only problem is that the playfield is already used to draw the maze walls, and you can only have 1 color for each row. So the program uses the playfield to draw the blue maze until it gets to a row that has dots in it. Then it changes to white and draws only the dots without drawing the maze. Then it switches back to blue and continues drawing the maze again. You can see the effects of this because wherever there is a row of dots, there is a black line in the maze walls where they are not drawn. The 1-pixel missile objects are used to fill in some of the holes in the maze walls.
So basically, in order to make the pac-dots look like squares instead of lines, (without making the holes in the walls any bigger), the dots and the walls would have to be the same color.
Actually, I think there is a bit more to it than that, because in order to draw the dots correctly, you can't just mirror or copy the playfield (because you might have eaten dots on one side of the screen but not the other). You would need to set it to "copy" and then change the graphics before it started drawing the 2nd half of the screen. However, the maze is perfectly symmetrical, so it is much easier to simply set it to "mirror" while drawing the maze and forget about it. In order to draw the dots and the maze on the same line, it would have to calculate where the dots should be and then add in where the maze should be while it was actually drawing it, and I'm not sure if this is possible.
This was longer than I wanted it to be, but I hope you get what I mean. By the way, I'm not a VCS programmer (yet), but I am very interested in it and have done a lot of research.
I have a question. Could this have been done back in the day or is this 2600 homebrew accomplished using modern technology.
If this was the original 2600 release, Atari would've died even faster. This would've been their most popular game by far and no other games would sell. 2600 would've simply been known as the Pac Man console.
Damn i'm stupid i thought 8k meant resolution
Yea everyone knows the 2600 was limited to 4k resolution.
Does the button give super speed?
Question: Can I play this game with just a "straight" normal 2600? I Dont need any improvement of the system to play this like a memory expansion or something like that? Not quite clear for me
Apparently it works fine on the old 2600 as is, awesome!
Will this work on an actual 2600 via Harmony cartridge?
Yes :)
I wonder how many souls the programmer had to sacrifice to Satan to get this to work on a 2600. Amazing piece of programming!
Awesome remake for the Atari 2600. The original stinks.
wonder how good ET could have been with 8k and LONGER THAN 5 MONTHS TO MAKE IT BY ONE PROGRAMMER
It's about motivation. If the programmer was able to earn a percentage of the profits from the game, I bet that programmer would work 24/7 every day for 5 months to complete an outstanding game. But the programmers just put in standard 9-5s and got paid the same salary whether the game was incredible or not.
That is awesome !!!! When do you think will it be possible to be bought on Atari Age? I would love to have this version on my 2600.
There's a 4K version thats for sale at Atari Age but its better to wait for the one you see in this video,which is 8K. This one has better sound and visuals,and less flicker. Sooner or later the programmer will have it available on cart,probably within the next 4-6 months. If you know how to play on emulators you can play the current version on an emulator called Stella. Here's the latest version which released a few days ago.
atariage.com/forums/topic/229152-new-pacman-for-atari-2600/page-46#entry3525518
Why doesn't this have 500,000 UpVotes ??
What is the rom?
The original Atari 2600 game acted like if they were making it for the game boy by only using 4 different colors total. (Super GameBoy or GBC, GBA etc.that can play in color)
atari actually used a huge amount of colors...??
Outstanding! Shut up and take my money!
Had this been the game instead of the crap they released, lots of people would have gladly handed over their money.
8k, but with 4k's speed would have been better.
I like it!
Wow
The remake of the failed game looks neat!
4k gameplay with the 8k music and sounds would be GREAT! can this be done? i really like the speed on the 4k one.
I WANT A CART!!!
I wish the commodore 64 had bigger sprites
Actually, I just wish the resolution was lower. 320*200 is too high, it's hard to make stuff look good on a CRT. It should be 200*200
Will you be making a cart for this... the 4k is fine but this is WAY better!!! I would rather see this as a cart... and what about Ms Pacman 8k???
ThePbrook1967 buy a harmony cartige. Add this rom. Pretty simple.
Mid 1970's tech, but this plays on all versions of the Atari 2600. Just good programming. 8K like Atari 2600 Asteroids, not even added RAM in the cart (like 2600 Dig Dug and 2600 Millipede).
Check out this: "2600 Draconian" ruclips.net/video/WqS0SMSTFHg/видео.html
I just did the arcade music, sound, and _sampled speech_ for this 2600 arcade port, stock sound chip, but added processor power in the cartridge, still using the 5 objects the 2600 has, sprite0, sprite1, 1-bit missile 0&1, 1-bit ball, background, (playfield object not used. Playfield is the maze and dots in this Pac-Man 8K):
I don't why the ditwits back in the 80's could not do this rather than making the most ugliest 'pastel' version ever.
Sad. It's no PS4 console but a lot of the games could be a lot better. At least they sort of get Ms Pac-Man right but still not quite there.
Man!!! If we had had this instead of that bastard child we got that they named pacman, who knows what might have happened with Atari!!!
I doubt a stock 2600 console with its limited ram is capable of handling this version...emulator yes but the real vcs? no
Mid 1970's tech, but this plays on all versions of the Atari 2600. Just good programming. 8K like Atari 2600 Asteroids, not even added RAM in the cart (like 2600 Dig Dug and 2600 Millipede).
Check out this: "2600 Draconian" ruclips.net/video/WqS0SMSTFHg/видео.html
I just did the arcade music, sound, and _sampled speech_ for this 2600 arcade port, stock sound chip, but added processor power in the cartridge, still using the 5 objects the 2600 has, sprite0, sprite1, 1-bit missile 0&1, 1-bit ball, background, (playfield object not used. Playfield is the maze and dots in this Pac-Man 8K):
Well you'd be wrong. It runs on real hardware. Plus the emulators emulate the original 400 bytes of RAM, so I'm not sure what you mean.
Too little....too late! Its cool though!
now I hate the 2500 version
3:32
i can't believe it ....so little Sprite flickering ....all the original behavior and the original maze... rememberin me spending hundred bucks on that shitty Atari original Version... Atari I want my Money back
Adventure By Warren Robinett is the next
the bast part is that i noticed that the ai for the ghost is the original one, what?, i have way to much free time