It could have been great if not for the glitches
1982 marked the height of the so called Video Game Craze, and one game in particular was devouring the hard earned quarters of children faster then their parents could pay them: Namco's Pac-Man. Naturally a port to the popular home consoles of the day seemed the next logical step in the Pac-Man craze. The result though was far from perfect.
Over all Pac-man for the 2600 keeps the game play of the original arcade game relitvily intact, with the player guiding Pac-Man through a variety of mazes devouring pellets, ghosts, and treasures. However the game play is where the similarities between the 2600 port and the orginal arcade game stop.
Most of the flaws that plague the 2600 port of pac-man have more to do with the 2600 itself and not the game. The Atari VCS/2600 wasn't designed to support a game as complex as Pac-Man, and the port shows it, in terms of graphics, controls, and sound the game have been canablized.
In terms of graphics the original arcade game was full of vibrant color and recognizable shapes. However in the port the graphics are very bland, and many of the shapes, such as apples, pears, and keys are replaced with brown and yellow squares. The worst aspect of the game though involves the ghosts. The Atari 2600 can only display two characters per frame, and the presence of the four ghosts, plus pac-man is more then the 2600's processers can take, and as a result the ghosts appear to flicker or appear as one ghost that is teleporting across the board.
The controls in the original arcade game were easy to use and allowed for full 360 degree turns. However the 2600's joystick, while still functioning for basic movement, doesn't allow for 360 degree turns, which will ultimatly frustrate many gamers.
In the original arcade port, the sound effects were great, and at times could even get a laugh at the arcade. In this verson the sound effects have been completly altered, to little more then chomps and beeps.
While Pac-Man is still a bad game, it deffintatly doesn't deserve it's reputation as one of the causes for the Crash of 1983. That ultimatly belongs to Atari's poor buisness decisions. The game that was relesased in 1982 was in fact an unfinished prototype, and Atari promised the programer a royalty on every pac-man cartridge sold if he could finish the project on time.
Over all Pac-man was a game that could have gone far, but ultimatly fell short due to bad buisness and greed. While the 2600 verson will appeal to die hard fans of pac-man and collectors, there are better versons of the game out there.