Atari has brought Pac-Man home to their 2600 console system, but it is near unrecognizable and a terrible waste of money. People expecting this game to be near its arcade counterpart will be sorely disappointed. Even considering the limitations of the 2600, this attempt to capture the magic of Pac-Man falls flat. The maze is not the same, though this is the least of the concerns. There's just nothing positive to say about this title. The sound effects are grating almost from the get-go, and if you're good at the game you get to suffer with them even longer. The "fruit" under the ghost box is nothing more that a "Vitamin Wafer" for bonus points, and never changes into anything else. And the ghosts have an odd blinking effect, apparently caused by the inability to display that many moving ghosts at once, so they blink rapidly so that they're never all visible at the precise instant in time. Even Pac-Man himself is crudely rendered and a mockery of the original. The gameplay is the best element here, as Pac-Man does move around the maze with relative ease. The graphics are clunky, overly large, and just a disservice to the arcade original. The sound should have been better, and while the game can be played for hours on end if you're good, it's the same thing over and over so there's really no great value to be had either. I'd save your money, as this is a title that should only be purchased as punishment for bad children.
I remember Christmas 1981 so well. It was a season of anticipation for one of the few gifts I wanted that year -- a copy of the Atari 2600 port of "Pac-Man". That game had literally dominated the arcades since ... Read Full Review
The hype of Pac-Man making the jump to the 2600 is not unlike the rumble created from any upcoming Zelda game now. The roar was furious. Stores were preselling the game [the first time ever in history, if memory serves... Read Full Review
