Oh, Namco, Namco, Namco...What WERE you thinking?!
EVERYONE at school had a deposit on their copy and all waited with baited breath for its release. How in the h-e-hockey sticks Atari thought this was an acceptable product before its release was anyone's guess.
The world let out a collective grumble, whine and sigh on release day.
Wtf??? What is this crap? What's that sound? It's like rubber bands snapping! The intro song is a 4-note beep! Gone is the catchy Pac-tune that invites you in to what should be dot-gobbling yumminess. It all went horribly wrong.
And was quite a dark day for the gaming community.
Unfortunately for many a gamer, this was all the dot-gobbling to be had back in that time so we had to make due. That boinging sound as Pac "gobbled" wafers was the bane of so many gamers' living rooms that were forced to extract their money's worth from this pig. Even the Odyssey2's KC Munchkin was a MUCH better version and it was a irp-off that I believe got Magnavox sued by Namco. A friend had the Bally-Midway Arcade and his Pac Man was [not surprisingly] nearly port-perfect.
To show that the 2600 COULD muster a decent port of an arcade machine, they wasted precious little time in getting Ms. Pac Man on that console, and a much better iteration it was. Even Jr Pac Man was a good port on the 2600. They should have revisited Pac Man and worked the same magic, offering it for free to everyone they wronged with that wretched first Pac title on that system.
Who's to blame? Probably Atari, ultimately, but Namco should've held tighter reins on their bread-winner and exercised creative control.
This game is a shop-vac...it not only sucks, but it blows too.