Last week, Atari gave us a double dose of surprising announcements. New DLC for the excellent Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration, and a new special edition of their 2600+ console are on the way, and they’re themed after the original video game icon, Pac-Man. Specifically, Atari’s version. 

Yes, what’s widely regarded as one of the worst arcade translations of its time, Pac-Man for Atari 2600 is still a massively important part of video game history, especially Atari’s. They’ve now partnered with Namco to finally bring this port back to the world, coupled with much better ports of other Namco classics like DigDug, Galaxian, and even a brand new version of Pac-Man for Atari 7800! 

The same day it was announced, I came across a post in several Facebook groups that struck me as particularly absurd. 

It read “What's wrong with Atari celebrating their adaptation of Pac-Man for the 2600? A lot.” 

Well, this I had to read. After all, the notion that Atari shouldn’t be celebrating such a significant part of their history seemed ridiculous. But one of my driving principles in life is the assumption that I’m never the smartest guy in the room. There’s always something I don’t know. Was there some sort of unheard-of controversy surrounding Pac-Man’s development? The expression “a lot” means a large amount, right? At the very least more than one! I was skeptical, but interested enough to learn something new. I took the bait, and I clicked. (Isn’t there some sort of term for content like this?) 

So, how many things did the author list that are wrong with Atari celebrating their adaptation of Pac-Man for Atari 2600? 

One… sort of. 

As far as I can tell, this article served exactly two purposes. One, to tell everyone that Pac-Man for Atari 2600 is bad, and two, as an excuse to provide links to the writer’s other content. The closest it came to providing a reason why Atari shouldn’t be “celebrating” the game, besides the author's personal distaste for it, was pointing out that Atari themselves refers to the conversion as “infamous.” I’m sorry, but by no definition is that “a lot,” nor is it, in my opinion, an adequate reason for the game to not be celebrated. 

This bothered me probably more than it should have. I should have just moved on. The headline was bait, seemingly intended to get people like me to click on the article, which then never appropriately addressed the point that enticed folks to read it in the first place. (There’s got to be a word for this…) 

So, I thought it would be fun to do the opposite. What's wrong with Atari Celebrating their Adaptation of Pac-Man for the 2600? Nothing! And here are some reasons why. 

Historical context

Today, if you show somebody Pac-Man for Atari 2600, they’ll probably scoff and write it off as garbage. And they wouldn’t be entirely wrong! Pac-Man 2600 is a remarkably poor conversion of Namco’s arcade classic. But that’s not the whole story. Pac-Man 2600 was phenomenally successful, as Pac-Man itself was hugely popular, and the ability to play it at home was a pretty huge deal. The story of its development is a fascinating one, and its lasting legacy on the industry is tremendous. A lot of its negative impacts have become overblown over the years, too. Some folks like to say it singlehandedly kicked off the North American video game crash, which it absolutely didn’t. It was a contributing factor, sure, but there’s a lot more to that story, hopefully some of which will be told in the new Atari 50 DLC! For all its faults, it’s a huge part of video game history, and any history of Atari that’s told without its inclusion is an incomplete one. 

Harmony Base Cart for Atari 2600 (Ice)

$54.99

  This is the Ice version of the Harmony Base Cart. This cartridge comes assembled in a frost shell with selected Edition label style.… read more

The TV show factor

There’s a glimpse of this being covered in the trailer for the Atari 50 DLC, and it made me so happy to hear someone else say it out loud. I’ve been shouting about this for ages! If you’ve watched a TV show in the last 20-30 years, and someone in it is playing video games, the sound effects are almost guaranteed to be a combination of Donkey Kong and Pac-Man, specifically the Atari 2600 versions. This has only gotten more silly as the years have gone by as the idea of these sound effects coming out of a PS5 is ridiculous, but it still happens! Obviously this doesn’t bring more awareness to the Donkey Kong bit, but having the game responsible for some sound effects that tons of people have likely heard repeatedly over the years is super cool, especially having that fact pointed out specifically in Atari 50! 

Preservation

Bad games deserve to be preserved, too, especially when they’re such an important part of video game history. The Atari 2600 is the very root of what the modern video game market has become today, and its biggest blockbusters, most of which were made by Atari themselves, have been largely unavailable for ages thanks to them being adaptations of games Atari doesn’t own. Yes, the 2600 versions of Centipede, Asteroids, and Missile Command have been readily available for ages, but many of their other biggest hits have been lost to time, and that includes Pac-Man. No, it’s not a particularly good version of the game, but for people trying to learn about the history of the medium, its quality doesn’t matter. 

It’s a great way to illustrate the evolution of home video games

No matter how you get this re-release of 2600 Pac-Man, it also comes with far better versions of the game. If you buy the physical cart to play on your original hardware or one of Atari’s + systems, it comes with the new 7800 port which looks great. If you buy it as part of the new DLC pack for Atari 50, that also includes the 5200 and Atari 8-bit ports, which were both pretty good as well. So no matter what you do, you’re being given a fantastic example of how much better things got following the 2600 release. I know this probably seems weird, but this is a great showcase of how much went into making good ports of arcade games in the old days. Nailing not just the look, but also the feel, was incredibly important, and having a prime example of what happens when you fail is just as important as having one for when you succeed. 

It’s still Pac-Man

Yes, this is a bad version of Pac-Man, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to have fun with it. Heck, for a lot of kids back then, this was their first introduction to Pac-Man. Even with its shoddy controls and baffling visual choices, the core of what made Pac-Man so much fun in arcades is still here in this version. There’s absolutely fun to be had here, especially if you’ve got nostalgia for it. It’s true that some fans were so disappointed with this conversion that they brought it back to stores to return, but a much larger percentage of players just kept it and played it. And while it leaves a lot to be desired, and was eventually replaced by far superior games on the 2600 in the form of an excellent port of Ms. Pac-Man and the sublime Jr. Pac-Man, it’s still a pretty good time for what it is, as long as you can see past everything it isn’t. 

That wasn’t so hard, was it? I’m aware that this post you’re reading has more than a dash of pettiness in it, but I really felt that this was a point worth making. There's nothing wrong with Atari and Namco celebrating their history together, including that ridiculous port of Pac-Man. 

What else is worth pointing out is what's truly confusing to me about this whole thing. The website that hosted the post about how Pac-Man for 2600 is bad, The Dot Eaters, is otherwise a pretty excellent source of information about video game history. Heck, the actual headline for the article read “Atari Leans Into Having Made the WORST Version of Pac-Man Ever.” That's great! Why not just post that? The author obviously knows what he’s talking about, and clearly has a passion for this hobby. That’s why it’s so bewildering to me that he would make a post that seems to imply he has an issue with Atari taking a monumentally important piece of video game history and making it available to modern audiences in a way that all but guarantees that they will also be able to play at least one genuinely good port as well. As someone who has also spent a considerable amount of time studying the history of video games, the notion that Atari should somehow pretend that this game never existed isn’t just wrong, it’s offensive. 

Honestly, I will always have love for Pac-Man on 2600 because it was my first exposure to the game. Once I got Ms. Pac-Man I rarely turned back, but I have very fond memories of the time I spent playing that original weirdo release. The box art is spectacular, too. I get that there are plenty of folks out there who hate the game, but there are plenty of other folks who like it for what it is. 

Pac-Man for 2600's inclusion in Atari 50 and cartridge re-release seem like a pretty great thing to me. Does this open the door for even more collaborations in the future? Could we get Activision content? Maybe Taito games like Space Invaders and Jungle Hunt? Maybe a partnership with Warner Bros to get classic Midway stuff like Defender (one of the best selling games on the 2600) and Atari Games titles like Gauntlet and Paperboy? I certainly hope so. 

What’s wrong with that? Nothing at all.