The Atari 2600 version of Namco‘s classic Pac-Man is notorious for being terrible… And it is truly rubbish… The animation of Pac-Man himself is awful, the ghosts flicker horribly*, the transition from a vertical maze to a horizontal one has not been well-handled, and the general all-round authenticity of the game is highly questionable…

*= Which is why I’ve chosen to alter some of these grabs, to give a better representation of the game, as seen on-screen.

That said: OH BOY, OH BOY, what the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man lacked in quality, it certainly made up for in SALES…

Launching on March 16th 1982, Pac-Man on the Atari 2600 sold 7.2 million copies in its first year of release, and also greatly boosted sales of the Atari 2600 console itself.

The guy who programmed it, Tod Frye, reportedly got a $0.10 royalty for each copy sold… Tod – if you’re out there: is this true, and what did you do with the money? 🙂

I do have to wonder though: what percentage of the people who bought Pac-Man were dissatisfied with it, and did that have an effect on the North American video game market crash of 1982? It must have… 🙂

More: Pac-Man on Wikipedia