Towards A Better Pac-Man for the 2600

[2001/05/05] Note to Maxim readers: This page wasn't intended for a non-technical audience. Seemy games page for more information and links to more relevant information about running old videogames on your computer.

	Original arcade version (well, one of them)
	The original Atari 2600 Pac Man was not plausibly Pac Man.
	Project Pac26 Started with Ms. Pac Man Hacked the sprites (of course) Altered theme music Changed audio code to improve authenticity Changed playfield color and layout   (to approximate that of arcade Pac-Man) Got rid of the extra tunnel and three extra mazes Made fruit sit in the middle of the screen without moving Added the siren Ended up with something that plausibly could be Pac Man. However, Hasbro is the legal copyright holder of all properties related to Pac Man. (download release 5 - 8 December 1999)

This project was started at the suggestion of Franklin Cruz in his article Why Didn't 2600 Games Look Like This? and by the frustration of not being able to buy the Ebivision version (link to video temporarily gone due to sudden extreme bandwidth suckage!)

I recently got myself a custom cart made of this hack, and did a design for my own amusement, loosely based on the original Namco cabinet and flyer art for the arcade version of Pac Man. Here is a rather large PDF (or 600dpi GIF or 300dpi GIF); I printed it on a full-sheet inkjet label (Avery #8255), coated it with a self-adhesive laminating sheet (3M #LS854-10), cut it out with an Exacto knife and put it on the cart. It really looks like the "real thing" up close even if I was not a design major ;)

See also Lee Krueger's great cart design.

Kneel at the altar of the Church of Pac-Man.

Find out why I gave up on hacking Odyssey2 K. C. Munchkin into something resembling Pac Man.

Also check out my somewhat less involved hack of Atari 2600 Space Invaders.