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Classic Arcade To Atari 2600 Conversions Rated
Thanks to PeekNPoke for its reviews of the best and worst of classic arcade game conversions on the Atari 2600. The piece looks at which early '80s conversions came off well, and notes Missile Command as one of the best ("Plays even better than the game it tries to emulate, and works very well with the standard joystick"), and Pac Man as less promising ("Usually voted as one of the worst arcade conversions on any system ever, and it is not hard to see why.") Which arcade conversions were you eagerly awaiting, only to find them ruined by classic hardware restrictions?
I know the Atari 2600 pac-man game was pretty bad, I owned it at one point.
Unfortunately, classic arcade game to home conversions still leave something to be desired. I recently purchased Midway Arcade Treasures, and the steering on some of the games is incredibly touchy... Although I can't really complain when I get 24 great games for $25... (I recommend it! An awesome bundle of games, even supports more than 2 players in the games that originally did!)
On a more nostalgic note... One of my fonder memories of my Sega Genesis was of the version of Ms Pac-Man available for it. It had all sorts of strange mazes, along with an editor! I wish the Pac-Man Collection for GBA would've had something like that instead of Pac-Attack... Pac-Attack is like Tetris meets Puyo Puyo meets a fresh pile of puppy crap. (although the puzzle mode is kind of enjoyable)
Would have been nice to see a conversion for the 2600, however it may have ended up a bit like the first game mentioned here.
I think it was Test Drive. It was always excellent at the arcades. Basically you start off, and you have two roads to choose from, straight on for a really basic course, and take a slip road on the right for the 'stunt' course.
:-) Are those three green blocks a tree? Ah, yes...
When this game made it to consoles, it totally blew. Not just because you had no wheel, but because the graphics were insanely poor.
As an aside, I'm actually amazed they thought ANY games were good on the Atari 2600. You had to have a serious power of imagination to play ANY game on that thing...
ET sold the system on it's own
Even back in the day, it was obvious to this youngster that if you wanted decent arcade conversions, you needed a ColecoVision. I mean, for arcade games that were brought to the two systems, compare the quality, e.g.
-Donkey Kong
-Frogger
-Q*Bert
-Burgertime.
These were all huge titles that looked and played great on Coleco. However, the 2600 renditions are a sad thing to behold. Check out these screen shots of 2600 Burgertime vs. Coleco Burgertime.
Because pac-man was remade for the Atari 2600 back in 1999. Here's yer link...
o ducts_id=104&osCsid=7ab412d311e1bbc941d11e4ac1d284 54
http://www.atariage.com/store/product_info.php?pr
Journal
only to find them ruined by classic hardware restrictions?
Actually, I believe someone demonstrated that the Atari 2600 hardware was capable of running an perfect port of the arcade version of Pac-Man by writing one for it. The problem was with the original programmers, not the hardware.
The problem, really, was with management.
Tod Frye was told in September that he had to have Pac-Man done in mid-October so it could be in stores by Christmas.
He actually negotiated royalties on it (a first for Atari carts) and became a millionaire, because millions of us bought the damn thing even though it sucked.
For a game that he had to hammer out in something like five weeks, it's not all that bad, but of course the 1999 hack of the Ms. Pac-Man cart shows how it could have been done right.
Adam
I know he's being funny, but there's some truth to that.
Ok, I was 8 years old at the time. It was 1982 and it was a time where i first saw the game Donkey Kong at a Pizza Hut, and was amazed because it looked just like a cartoon. I think I would have played anything at the time as long as it could be classed as a video game. This was an age when arcades were leaps and bounds ahead of the consoles.
It was a time when there really weren't many video game magazines. You have to admit that before EGM (you couldn't find "Joystick" at your local supermarket), nobody was really reviewing video games, there was no set standard. Video games back then were a fad like break dancing and the rubiks cube.
I actually got my Atari in 83 when it was in the clearance bin at a Venture department store. There was no way my parents would have put up with today's 200 dollar must have console and 4 year upgrade system that the industry has us to believe is the norm of consumer spending. Chances are, if you were a child of the early 80s you had ATARI, and maybe Colicovision/Intellevision or a home computer if you were lucky. But at the time atari was home video games. And we would have played anything put in front of us. Yeah, I had an Atari because it was cheep, and i played the hell out of it. I got the games that went on the clearance bin, PAC-MAN was one of them. It had a maze, 4 ghosts, power-pellets and a pacman. At the time, it was all the consumer wanted. I don't remember anyone complaining at the time.
Nowadays, it's easy to think of the horrible business mistakes that Atari made, and the landfill of pac-man/ET games, and the complete shovelware that caused the video game crash in early/mid 80's. At the time, I didn't even realize there was a crash. Today is so different, where the video game industry is judged against the movie industry, that it's really easy to come up with snotty reviews against the games that are being released for the holidays. Today, it is more than normal to buy a game based on what some "expert" says about it on some website or magazine, in fact it's a necessity. But back in the day, all you needed to sell spaceman was to produce the maze, ghosts and pacman and put it out on the market before the competition.
I know I'm kind of rambeling on, I guess the point is... If you wrote an article in 1982 about the horrible translation of pac-man for the atari 2600, no one would have any idea of what you are talking about.