Retro Scan of the Week: Happy Pac-Man and Floating “Video Wafers”
April 17th, 2006 by Benj Edwards
Look at the little spud, frozen mid-stride in a moment of pure ghost-running bliss. As a continuation of last week’s Retro Scan, here are two pages from the manual of the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man. The game itself was a terrible translation of the arcade hit (for Pac-Man done right on the 2600, see Ms. Pac-Man). The graphics were so bad that the manual tells you about the “video wafers” (lines, in lieu of pellets) that Pac-Man eats in this game. Also, the bonus fruit have become “vitamins” — because they’re square.
I wonder if Pac-Man would be so happy if he knew that Atari would be burying thousands (if not millions) of copies of his game in a landfill a few years later.
April 17th, 2006 at 11:26 am
Has every Atari game been buried in a Landfill? I thought it was only E.T.
Lol, I do remember seeing this game, it looked nothing like the arcade game and I think it lost some of its ‘Dynamite game play’ somewhere in the translation.
April 18th, 2006 at 9:06 am
I wonder if a thousand years from now someone will find all Atari cartridges burried and exibith them in a museum, as a show of our era…
They will think we were playing very lousy games! 🙂
April 18th, 2006 at 6:05 pm
PAC-MAN LIKES OTHER PAC-MEN! OH NOES! ^_^
April 18th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
Pac-man definitley is not as good at home as it is in an arcade
April 19th, 2006 at 12:08 am
The need for a quick version enabled and at the same time disabled the atari version. Forgiveness comes from those who are grateful for the ends and not the means.
February 18th, 2011 at 1:09 pm
I always loved how the power pills and wafers looked as a kid. I always wanted to eat the items as drawn in this booklet.
I also remember joking about this game with my older brother a lot, and actually, it still gets laughs when I bring it up. All I have to do is imitate the sounds from the game…DO DEE DO-DOO wak wak wak wak…wak wak…