July | 2025 | The Dot Eaters

I can remember the fevered (literally) buzz around Pac-Man when it started appearing in arcades in 1980; how it looked so different and like an actual cartoon compared to other games vying for our quarters, how the ghosts seemed to chase me purposefully around the maze (in those heady days when the term AI wasn’t always on our tongues), and even how I made a few bucks learning and selling patterns for winning at the game to my fellow school classmates.

I also remember, very clearly like an old injury that has never quite healed, how absolutely disappointed I was when, having bought Atari’s adaptation of the game from the store and ran home, clutching the box in my sweaty little hands, and shoving it into my Atari VCS and turning it on. While it sported Pac-Man on the label, inside nothing looked, sounded, or more importantly felt, like the arcade game. While I wasn’t expecting perfect fidelity with the source material, I was at least hoping for something in the ballpark. Atari Pac-Man isn’t even in the same continent.

However, Atari has a new bright yellow Pac-Man Edition of their 2600+ mini-console, along with a new 7800 2-in-1 version of the game, as well as a family of joysticks in the colour of Pac-Man and the ghosts that chased him around the playfield, all to seemingly celebrate the wildly popular arcade game classic, and Atari’s adaptation of it for the home, made by Tod Frye.

I find it pretty hilarious that Atari is leaning into their adaptation of Pac-Man, especially since they allude to the issue of why they probably shouldn’t in the next part of the ad:

Yes, that’s right, Atari, “Infamous”. Infamous because the 2600 version of Pac-Man is one of the worst video games ever made, and as I point out in my article here at The Dot Eaters about The Great Video Game Crash, the disappointment felt by fans of the arcade original, or really, of video games in general, was palpable… so much so that it helped crater the entire industry. The game looked barely like the arcade game, played like it even less, and the less said about the flat sound effects, the better. Not only were customers greatly disappointed, but so were game retailers who had to deal with massive returns of the game after people tried playing it. Stock balancing policies meant that these returned cartridges were then sent back to Atari for a refund, further dragging down company revenue.

It’s further goofy to me that Atari accentuates the color aspect of these new releases, as their 2600 Pac-Man was nearly monochrome in nature…. a problem particularly when a player would eat a “vitamin” to turn the tables on the ghosts, and they remained nearly the same, drab, flickering shade they are for the rest of the game. It’s telling that Atari has put the graphics of the arcade game on their Pac-Man edition of the 2600+, because if they put the home game characters on there, the vast gulf between the original and Atari’s version would be on full display.

Here’s a video I made a long time ago, showing Atari’s fetid excuse for a Pac-Man adaptation in “action”. Judge for yourself, if you have the intestinal fortitude. While, with a video, you don’t get to experience how awful the game was to actually play, what with the sluggish “control” you have over Pac-Man…. although you can see me struggle to move the character through the passageways. The “game feel” of manic maze games was a critical part of the player experience; control in Atari’s Pac-Man leaves one feeling as deflated as Pac after he is caught by a ghost.

Of the great cultural touchstones we’ve lost over the years, the saddest, I think, is the demise of the video arcade. During the boom years of video games they used to be everywhere: on the main street of every city, town and village, in every mall, and especially in any self-respecting tourist area. You can read a thorough forensic dive into the death of video game arcades, and video games in general, here at The Dot Eaters’ in the article “The Great Video Game Crash”.

But we’re not here today to talk about the devastating loss of our digital hopes and dreams that occured between 1983 – 1984. We’re here to relive our, as Bruce Springsteen said, Glory Days. The days when, if you wanted to experience the best video games had to offer – the most advanced graphics, the greatest creativity, the best social aspect – you went to a video arcade. Where the flashing lights and incessant blooping and bleeping played like an irresistible siren song in your ears. Everywhere you looked your eyes met a feast of out-there abstracted digital fantasies. Especially at a marvelous arcade Mecca like Atlantic City.

So come on, take my hand as we step into the electric wonderland of video game arcades that thrived in America’s Playground, where digital dreams and quarter-fueled glory awaited at every cabinet.