Let's Compare Pac-Man

[TrekMD]

Pac-Man is an arcade game developed by Namco and licensed for distribution in the United States by Midway, first released in Japan on May 22, 1980. Immensely popular from its original release to the present day, Pac-Man is considered one of the classics of the medium, virtually synonymous with video games, and an icon of 1980s popular culture. Upon its release, the game—and, subsequently, Pac-Man derivatives—became a social phenomenon that sold a bevy of merchandise and also inspired, among other things, an animated television series and a top-ten hit single.

When Pac-Man was released, the most popular arcade video games were space shooters, in particular Space Invaders and Asteroids. The most visible minority were sports games that were mostly derivative of Pong. Pac-Man succeeded by creating a new genre and appealing to both genders. Pac-Man is often credited with being a landmark in video game history, and is among the most famous arcade games of all time. The character also appears in more than 30 officially licensed game spin-offs, as well as in numerous unauthorized clones and bootlegs.  According to the Davie-Brown Index, Pac-Man has the highest brand awareness of any video game character among American consumers, recognized by 94 percent of them. Pac-Man is one of the longest running video game franchises from the golden age of video arcade games, and one of only three video games that are on display at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. (along with Pong and Dragon's Lair).

GAME PLAY

The player controls Pac-Man through a maze, eating pac-dots. When all dots are eaten, Pac-Man is taken to the next stage, between some stages one of three intermission animations plays. Four enemies (Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde) roam the maze, trying to catch Pac-Man. If an enemy touches Pac-Man, a life is lost. When all lives have been lost, the game ends. Pac-Man is awarded a single bonus life at 10,000 points by default—DIP switches inside the machine can change the required points or disable the bonus life altogether. Near the corners of the maze are four larger, flashing dots known as power pellets that provide Pac-Man with the temporary ability to eat the enemies. The enemies turn deep blue, reverse direction and usually move more slowly. When an enemy is eaten, its eyes remain and return to the center box where it is regenerated in its normal color. Blue enemies flash white before they become dangerous again and the amount of time the enemies remain vulnerable varies from one stage to the next, but the time period generally becomes shorter as the game progresses. In later stages, the enemies don't change colors at all, but still reverse direction when a power pellet is eaten.

Enemies

The enemies in Pac-Man are known variously as "ghosts" and "monsters". Despite the seemingly random nature of the enemies, their movements are strictly deterministic, which players have used to their advantage. In an interview, creator Toru Iwatani stated that he had designed each enemy with its own distinct personality in order to keep the game from becoming impossibly difficult or boring to play. More recently, Iwatani described the enemy behaviors in more detail at the 2011 Game Developers Conference. He stated that the red enemy chases Pac-Man, and the pink and blue enemies try to position themselves in front of Pac-Man's mouth. While he claimed that the orange enemy's behavior is random, a careful analysis of the game's code reveals that it actually chases Pac-Man most of the time, but also moves toward the lower-left corner of the maze when Pac-Man is facing a certain direction.

Source:  Wikipedia

The video below has a "few" versions to compare...
https://youtu.be/d4EeF_nM0iY

[TL]

My god! We could be there forever with this one! 

[TrekMD]

That's why I said, a "few."  LOL

[TL]

Trying to think how many versions I own 

[TrekMD]

Trying to think how many versions I own 

I have the 2600 versions (versions given all the multiple hacks and homebrews), 5200, 7800, and Lynx versions. 

[onthinice]

One of my favorite's!

I have the 2600, 8-bit, 5200, Coleco Tabletop, GameCube, intellivision, Nes, N64, Playstation 1, Playstation 2 Namco 50th Anniversary and Xbox Live arcade compilation disc which has Championship Pac-Man.

[TrekMD]

I forgot that I have the Intellivision version on my Cuttle Cart 3!  I do have to try it out, though. 

[onthinice]

It is a good version just a smaller maze. I bet it really made Intellivision owners happy in the 80's.

[TrekMD]

It is a good version just a smaller maze. I bet it really made Intellivision owners happy in the 80's.

Well, it certainly beats the 2600 version...at least the original one.  The homebrew versions of 2600 Pac-Man are nothing short of impressive.  I have 10 different versions and several of them have perfect mazes.  Some done with 4K only!  There is also an 8K hack of Atari's version of Pac-Man that is quite fun to play because it has the original maze colors (even though the maze is the Atari maze), fruits, colored ghosts, better sounds, and intermissions.

[onthinice]

It is amazing what has been done.

[DZ-Jay]

It is a good version just a smaller maze. I bet it really made Intellivision owners happy in the 80's.

It did, but it was missing some stuff.  For instance, Pac-Man's movements do not support "cornering" like in the arcade, and the ghosts where lifted straight from the 2600 game. (Ugh!)

Also, the intermission scenes are there, but they are sort of lamey.

Fun fact:  I started working on a port of Pac-Man for the Intellivision a few years ago to rectify those issue.  I got so far as to built the sprite driver, the maze control framework, the path-finding algorithms, a scripting framework for the intermission scenes, and some other things--all from scratch, without looking at the original ROM.

Pac-Man's movements were spot on with cornering and all, and I think it's the only 8-bit port that included that.

Christmas Carol started from that base. In particular, the controller handling and the "cornering" still remain in Carol. 


--
Sent from my iPhone, so igmore teh typpos...

[TrekMD]

That is cool!  So, Pac-Man served as part of the framework for Christmas Carol!  Great use of your code!  So, do you have any plans for finishing Pac-Man for the INTV?

[DZ-Jay]

That is cool!  So, Pac-Man served as part of the framework for Christmas Carol!  Great use of your code!  So, do you have any plans for finishing Pac-Man for the INTV?

Nothing concrete.  I do want to finish it someday, though.  It's one of my favorite arcade games of all time.


--
Sent from my iPhone, so igmore teh typpos...

[TrekMD]

Well, let us know if you decide to pursue it. 

[TL]

He mentions in the video that he missed out the amazing Pac-Man collection for the 7800 so here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ9S-ETYtrk

There is also a ColecoVision version of Pac-Man collection too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEij8U_9 ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOIimp76NyA