When it comes to the original Pac-Man release on the Atari 2600, there is a lot of debate over whether it should be considered such a bad game. Many say that while they were somewhat dissapointed the game did not resemble the original, they still played and enjoyed it. I consider myself to be a pretty big Pac-Man fan who's been playing the arcade game and its variants since I was young on my Game Boy Advance through Pac-Man Collection and Namco Museum (which included Ms. Pac-Man). I can usually get fairly far into Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, often at least to the first cutscene (and much further with the speedup hack). The Atari 2600 version has always intrigued me, and while I've played it occasionally over the years, I've been doing a lot of collecting for the 8-bit Atari consoles lately and thought I should sit down and take some time to see if Pac-Man on the 2600 is really as bad as many say.
An important thing to note is I'll be judging this game based on its own merits, rather than how accurate it is to the original arcade game. For those who are unaware, Pac-Man was notoriously different from the arcade game which caused a lot of controversy. For reference, here's a picture of Pac-Man as it appeared in arcades compared to the 2600 release:
The most obvious issues are the maze layout and the incorrect color pallete. Pac-Man is well known for its well designed maze, which has been significantly changed in this version. Additionally, the background color is blue and the walls are brown. There are other significant changes in gameplay which will be discussed later on. In short, Pac-Man on the 2600 is so different to the arcade version that if you judge it by its faithfullness, it'll obviously be considered bad. However, it is possible for the game to be good on its own without relying on the Pac-Man source material. Thus, I will be treating this mainly as if it's an original 2600 game, rather than a port, only bringing up differences when they have to do with its gameplay.
The basic structure of the game is similar to Pac-Man. You play as the titular character, eating the "video wafers" (as the manual puts it) and avoiding the ghosts. If you hit one of them, you lose a life. Losing all lives ends the game. In each of the four corners are the "power pills", which act identically to the power pellets in the arcade game, stunning ghosts for a few seconds and becoming vulnerable to Pac-Man. Eating the ghosts gives points. Additionally, a "vitamin" (the replacement for fruits) can appear in the center of the screen for bonus points.
The first major gameplay element I'd like to cover is the maze design. The layout is okay in my opinion, but not as good as the arcade layout. If you look closely, you'll realize the sides of the maze are actually made of smaller parts that repeat four times to make the maze. This was done due to the limitations of the 2600. The issue with the layout is many parts feel too boxed in. There are a bunch of corners which ghosts can easily surround you in. There are more four way intersections in the 2600 version, but these are concentrated mostly at the center of the screen. It's mostly the far left and right sides which feel the most dangerous, as you need to go into cramped feeling areas to get all of the wafers which often don't have many options for a quick getaway. Luckily, this is where the power pills are located, which helps to balance the difficulty somewhat. I do like that the maze was made with 4:3 aspect ratios in mind, being more horizontally oriented than vertically oriented. Many other ports struggled to fit the maze on the screen without it feeling stretched. Additionally, the tunnels from the original were mantained, being moved to the top and bottom instead of the left and right. Overall, I think the maze layout is decent, however the repetition can definitley be a bit mind numbing.
Next is the ghosts. There are four of them and they usually try to more directly chase after Pac-Man unlike the arcade varieties. They still seem at least somewhat capable of cornering Pac-Man at least, so you still need to think about avoiding them. However, there is one major problem with them: the flicker. The flickering ghosts were a large part of why many disliked this game, and I have to say it really makes the experience much worse. Something to note is I typically play Atari 2600 games on my Atari 2600+ with an HDMI to composite video adapter so I can play them on a CRT. This works great for most games, giving clean video output with not too much lag. However, when playing Pac-Man I could barely see the ghosts. I had to really strain my eyes to see them, but I was constantly running into them, not even knowing they were there. Playing in black and white TV mode helped a bit, as it made the ghosts blend into the background a bit less. It didn't fix the problem completely though. Additionally, after playing for a bit, my eyes started to hurt because I was straining them so much to try and see the ghosts. Another thing to note is when you eat the ghosts and they turn blue, they tend to blend into the blue background a lot. Again, this is fixed in black and white TV mode, but that makes it harder to tell which ghosts are scared and which aren't. There is an audio cue when the power pill wears off, but I still often ran into ghosts by accident, thinking I still had invulnerable time. After playing a bit I decided to try playing on my modern LCD television, which is a bit bigger and clearer than my CRT, and I found the ghosts quite a bit easier to make out, so it might just be my hardware. I might have to play it a bit more to see if it's much better on an LCD, but after straining my eyes for a while on the CRT I didn't really want to keep playing much longer.
Overall, I think Pac-Man is a pretty sub-par Atari 2600 game when compared to a lot of other games in the library. Other games like Mousetrap do a better job at being a maze chase game on the 2600, and many other games have much better graphics than Pac-Man does. I think it's okay gameplay wise, as long as the flickering doesn't bother you too much. If you're using an emulator like Stella you can set the emulated phosphor decay to last longer, which helps to eliminate the flicker. There are also a few other gameplay modes including faster or slower ghosts which I might try out later on my LCD TV. I'll probably update this review once I've played Pac-Man a bit more. I think it's definitely worth checking out, as it's practically everywhere. Pac-Man was the best selling 2600 game and I see cartridges for very cheap practically everywhere I go that sells old games. If I had to give it a numberic rating, I'd give it a 4/10.
Additionally, if you were looking for an actually good version of Pac-Man on the 2600, a version of Ms. Pac-Man which is much more faithful to the original Ms. Pac-Man was released which I think is definitely worth playing. Someone even hacked Ms. Pac-Man to convert it into the original Pac-Man with an accurate maze layout, which is pretty cool. There's also the well known Pac-Man 4K homebrew, which gives a great arcade accurate experience (if you can find a cartridge). Lastly, Atari's releasing the Pac-Man Double Feature game soon which contains the Atari 2600 version and a new version for the Atari 7800 on one cartridge which looks fantastic. You'll need a 7800 or 2600+/7800+ to play it though.