Tod R. Frye (born 1955) is an American programmer who was employed at Atari. Although he worked on various projects such as the portable Breakout, the Atari 8 bit version of Asteroids, the Swordquest series and three of 2600 prototypes (Save Mary, Shooting Arcade and Xevious), he is best known for his version of Pac -Man on Atari VCS. Often criticized, this port was nevertheless a box, contributed to the sales of the console and was the subject of an international competition in 1982. With the hindsight we have today, how should we consider this game?

Undoubtedly, we can blame a number of things on this Pac-Man. What first strikes the eye is the labyrinth, which is neither blue nor faithful to the structure of that of the arcade version. Then, the ghosts all have the same color and flash horribly (effect reproduced opposite, by attenuating the presence of the sprites). Finally, the gameplay includes many differences compared to the original version: the detection of contact between Pac-Man and ghosts, the latter's movement strategy, the frequency of appearance of fruits (which are replaced by a single vitamin )... In addition to these main faults, there are many additional details: poor sound design, absence of interludes, a slow and all-white Pac-Man (in the Sécam version), etc. Moreover, between 1982 and 1984, a dozen specialized American magazines did not fail to point out these faults. In short, a player accustomed to Pac-Man Arcade has good reason to be disappointed when he discovers the 2600 version. To this is added the fact that Atari produced 12 million cartridges but only sold 8 , which is still 4 million unsold... All this sounds like a flop.

Put back in its period context, the reality is all the same less dark. Let us remember that in 1982, date of the release of this game on 2600, there was no adaptation of Pac-Man on the two other consoles of the moment and that the only titles vaguely approaching it on these systems were Lock'n'Chase (Intellivision) and Gluttons et Voraces (Videopac). As for the dedicated consoles (first generation) none had maze games. The 2600 version was therefore the best, if not the only alternative for playing Pac-Man at home, and it could boast of having been produced under official license from Namco. Although the graphics and gameplay do not adhere to the original, this adaptation is quite playable, the challenge is present and those who did not know the arcade version had no comparison criteria. Clearly, the Pac-Man 2600 is a real scoring game worthy of the name. In addition, it offers eight difficulty variants to adapt to the level of each player. As far as sales are concerned, even if 4 million unsold copies remained on Atari's hands, the game still sold 8 million copies, making it the best-selling game on the Atari 2600. (for a sales figure of approximately $300 million). And to those who think that the game has sold, but would have remained unused, there is only to see the traces of wear that we observe on most cartridges for sale on the Internet to realize that this game really made the owners of the Atari VCS happy in 1982.

One can still wonder why the author of this adaptation did not seek to adhere more faithfully to the original version. Of course, the technical constraints come first: The Atari 2600 has a low resolution graphics mode (40 columns), low capacity cartridges (4 KB - and not 2 KB as some articles claim) and a RAM very restricted (128 bytes). Added to this is the fact that Tod Frye has chosen to allow a two-player mode, which means that the maze of the two participants must be memorized, thus reducing the RAM by half. It may indeed be a strategic error, because without it, we know that it would have been possible to have the real labyrinth, as Ébivision had demonstrated with its Pac-Man, and as others confirmed it by performing more advanced hacks including a breathtaking 8K version. Regarding the flashing of ghosts, it must be said that it was the only trick we knew at the time to multiply the sprites, knowing that the console only has two: one to display Pac-Man and the other for the four ghosts. To have more sprites, some games will use the technique of selective flickering (Ms Pac-Man, Dig Dug, etc.), but unfortunately this had not yet been developed in 1982 and Tod's Pac-Man Frye was therefore unable to benefit from it.

The grievances against the Pac-Man on the Atari 2600 are completely understandable and it is true that all the children of 1982 would have preferred a more faithful version. But this port still filled a gap at the time by allowing the entire planet to play Pac-Man at home... and it still allows you to have fun today with a game that has the advantage over the arcade version of having a particularly retro look, something to which lovers of the history of video games have always remained sensitive.

La page wikipédia dédiée à la version 2600
La page Wikipédia dédiée à Pac-Man
Pac-Man Ébivision (compatible Starpath)
Pac-Man 4K sur AtariAge
Pac-Man 8K sur AtariAge : le meilleur Pac-Man