Scott Stilphen

You've heard all the same rumors about Pac-Man that I have - that Tod was rushed to make the game, and that the game was actually a prototype. Well, I just came across this post on AA. It's 2nd-hand info, but again a completely different story that apparently came from Frye. The game is so bad, it almost makes this version of events believable. As much as Pac-Man appears to have been done in a matter of weeks, if Tod started it before Dennis left to found Imagic (which was founded in July 1981) and Marketing was that hot on getting the game out, it would have been out by Christmas of that year, and not late March the following. So I just don't see any rush there on anybody's part to get the game done and out the door. The AA story is interesting, but I'm not sure there's much truth to it: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/81989-pacman4k/?p=1353919 "I asked Tod about this when I worked with him at 3DO. He wasn't as into reminiscing about Atari as Howard Scott Warshaw was, but I did coax some tid bits out from him about this. The details that I can remember are: What he showed to the execs was only a prototype to show what could be done theoretically. But the execs felt that with a little polish, the game could ship in a matter of weeks, and they'd all make tons of money. I think it was Tod's intent to sit down and remake the game correctly, but the execs didn't want to "waste time" when they thought what he showed them was playable. Regarding the color, Atari marketing had a strict policy on avoiding black backgrounds for any game that didn't take place in space. They felt that color helped to sell a game because color TVs were only beginning to become mainstream around that time, and they wanted to hype up the fact that the VCS could produce color. So it's doubtful that marketing would have let Tod correct the colors if he wanted to. And lastly, the bit about the ghosts flashing: Tod knew how to implement the now-famous horizontal interrupt that was later used in Ms. Pac-Man to cut down on the flashing. But his project manager was an ass and was very patronizing to him, so he left it out and submitted a final version that did not contain the fix. He was one of the first Atari programmers to get a huge royalty check under the new bonus incentives that Atari arranged to keep from losing programmers to the competition (Activision, Imagic...) so I don't think he lost too much sleep over the lack of accuracy. Honestly, Tod is a brilliant guy, and if he wanted to make a more accurate conversion of Pac-Man, I'm sure he could have. But it doesn't matter how smart you are; when you work for buttheads all you make is poo. (I cleaned that last bit up, but you know what I mean)"

I've never found what what Frye did to get himself on probation. It's hard to imagine what one would have to do back then at Atari, but Dennis Koble mentioned Frye wasn't the most motivated guy: http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/interviews/dennis_koble/interview_dennis_koble.html Q: Were you involved or know anything about the Space Invaders and Super Breakout LCD hand-helds Atari planned in 1980? Dennis Koble: I never actually have seen one of these before today (or even a picture of it). The LCD games were done in the VCS consumer division while I was Manager there, but I only remember just a little about Super Breakout in particular because Tod Frye, who programmed it, had trouble focusing on deadlines at the time and I had to “handhold” him in the evening to try to finish it. Tod was (and is) a very smart guy, but in those days he had a hard time focusing on the task at hand and therefore was not good at meeting schedules which Atari (under Ray Kassar) was focused on. It galled Ray Kassar to no end that he had to rely on a bunch of flakey-ass programmers to run a 5 billion-dollar-a-year business. To say there was a clash of cultures is a gross understatement. Q: If I recall, Tod Frye mentioned in an online keynote video that you were the CES Manager when he was given VCS Pac-Man to do. As far as I know, Tod started Pac-Man around May 1981 (btw, that same Atari book claims Pac-Man was Tod's first game at Atari! lol). You mentioned Imagic was formally founded on July 17th, 1981. Do you recall when he started it, or what month you left Atari? Dennis Koble: No, I do not, although I expect it might be in the public record as when Imagic was formed. I left Atari during those times to start Imagic with a number of other people. I wasn’t away long from Atari when we founded Imagic. It was all a whirlwind. It is possible Tod did start VCS Pac-Man while I was still Manager, but since I can’t remember who took over for me, perhaps that was during the time when I told Atari I was leaving. I think I probably gave Atari a couple of weeks notice, but I don’t really remember the details. ------------- The story Frye tells in Once Upon Atari about there was already some resentment towards him and some looked upon him as a clown before his big payday with Pac-Man also is worth noting. His drug use wasn't the issue, since that was basically part of Atari's culture since day one. But not being productive or doing sub-standard work? Yeah, I imagine that would be the worst thing anyone could have done back then. So if I had to guess, I'd say the basis for his probation was regarding that. The question I have is, where was Marketing and all their critical play-testing with this game? Nowhere, absolutely nowhere. It was Pac-Man. That's all they cared about. Even Larry Kaplan said as much - they didn't care as long as it had the right name on it. The name was more important than how it looked or played. We know that with Warshaw's Yars' Revenge. Marketing (specifically Steve Wright) delayed its release for months, because they felt there were problems with it. Maybe the problem was, it wasn't the Star Castle arcade port they originally wanted, so maybe that was 'punishment' for Warshaw (a new hire at Atari, with this being his first game) taking it upon himself to reinvent the game. Warshaw never made such comments AFAIK, but the office politics at Atari were said by many to be "interesting".

Recent article about VCS Pac-Man in this month's Retro Gamer Magazine. Tod again claims having a 2-player option was somehow an essential part of Pac-Man, as if we were talking about a co-op feature like with Warlords. Anyone else would have dropped the 2-player option very early in the dev process, realizing what the restrictions were with having only 4K. As for the color scheme, look at all the other coin-op ports that were done before Pac-Man. Even b&w arcade games like Breakout and Space Invaders duplicated the colored overlays that were used. For him to say "Nobody knew what was important" is nonsense. Clearly everyone else knew what was important, and the rules weren't as unclear or unknown as he likes to claim - if you're doing a coin-op conversion, the objective is to COPY the arcade game as closely as possible. "No one knew"? EVERYONE knew. If the game was purely b&w, like Air-Sea Battle or Asteroids, then sure, take advantage of the fact the system has color. But to take a game like Pac-Man and put a colored background in it, when part of the visual appeal of most games back then was to see colors against a black background (something Rob Fulop fully understood with most of his games) just shows how goofed up on drugs Todd must have been for him to think that was a good idea. How come he didn't put a colored background in his 400/800 Asteroids? Yet with most of his VCS games (Pac-Man, SQ FireWorld, Save Mary), the coloring schemes were just an eyesore. Sorry, but to spend 6 months on a 4K game and have it look or sound nothing like the game it's based on is still just as unforgivable, even 36 years later. No, he was no pioneer with Pac-Man, other than he was the first to do a truly horrible coin-op conversion version. He can come up with all the excuses he wants, but Tod did a %!#$& job on the game. Yeah, he 'touched' millions of people, if you want to call disappointing them 'touching' them. And the touted reward program that Atari initiated? Yeah, Tod "pioneered" that when he threatened to leave prior to Pac-Man being released unless he got royalties. Some pioneer. RetroGamerMagazine-the_story_of_pac-man_on_atari_2600_4-18.pdf

What is this Pancake game I see?

Boxed Adventure for $1,500! https://www.ebay.com/itm/202277580230?ul_noapp=true Too bad it's not even an original copy but a re-release from 1981 at the earliest. The game was originally released in early-mid 1980 and no boxes from 1980 had a hanging tab on the back of them. Also, every box with that tab had glued flaps, and both features didn't start appearing on Atari's boxes until early 1981. When Atari changed their cartridge label style from text (which Adventure originally had) to labels with color photos (which is what the Ebay seller has), they re-released many of the text-label carts with the new style. Atari put a copyright date of 1978 on the packaging with these re-releases (due to the copyrights having to be redone). Here's an article with more information about the different label styles: http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/articles/vcs_label_variations/vcs_label_variations.html#picture This site has photos of what the original Adventure cart and box look like: http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-2600-vcs-adventure_8246.html Note the copyright date is correct (1980) on both the cart label and box. And here's the page with photos of the re-release the seller has: http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-2600-vcs-adventure_18101.html Note how the copyright date is now 1978 on both, even though that cart label style didn't come out until 1981.

Is this a PAL version? The sky shouldn't be purple

RickR kindly offered 6 issues of the Portland Atari Club newsletter to be archived for the site, which are now online: http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/newsletters/portland_atari_club/portland_atari_club.html

It is now

http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/interviews/dennis_koble/interview_dennis_koble.html Dennis Koble started his illustrious career as one of Atari's early coin-op designers. He started at Atari in 1976 and was the 4th programmer hired. During his 5 years there, he worked in nearly every division before leaving to co-found Imagic. He got back into coin-op games with Sente, and later co-founded another company that specialized in games for the PC and Sega Genesis. Most recently, he tried his hand at designing mobile app games.

Great article, passed on to me from Ross "lost dragon" about someone you've probably never heard of, but has worked over 100 titles: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-08-10-death-threats-false-personas-and-philanthropy-the-untold-story-of-jane-whittaker#ampshare=http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-08-10-death-threats-false-personas-and-philanthropy-the-untold-story-of-jane-whittaker

I don't have any copies of it.

Here's another: https://archive.org/details/OMNI198402 Any chance you could scan yours in, Clint?

https://twitter.com/llamasoft_ox/status/908815610418692096 I was hoping for new music instead of the same soundtrack used for T2K, but still looking forward to playing it.

Sure do PM sent. Btw, there's at least 6 issues on Archive.org by Allan52

http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/newsletters/newsletters.html

I went to the park back in 1982 soon after it opened. It was basically Tomorrowland as its own park. I'll attach some photos. I'm pretty sure I also still have a commemorative ticket from that trip. The two CommuniCore centers under the sphere were totally amazing at the time. I remember they had touchscreens in there to try. Hard to imagine now, but at the time, that was truly sci-fi stuff Innoventions replaced all that with video games, which was a real letdown (I walked in and walked right back out). The hydroponics farm in The Land was something else far ahead of its time. The rides were really rather 'weak' IMO (as a kid, it didn't take long to be bored with waiting in lines at various Epcot buildings, only to be bored by the ride itself). There was nothing like Space Mountain, that's for sure. By the time they added Test Track (an attempt to draw more visitors, but it was hardly Future World material), the park was really dated/neglected, and a lot of the stuff worth seeing was gone. It was a shame because Epcot was always intended to be in constant 'flux' and updated as new technologies came along, and it just wasn't. I think Horizons was boarded up at the time, and I remember walking around and seeing garbage in the various ponds, which was rather shocking for a Disney park. Last time I was there was in 2001 and Horizons was gone so I haven't seen Mission: Space or any of the newer additions. I'm also attaching an article I came across in the September 1982 issue of spectrum magazine about the park. epcot - spectrum_sep82.pdf

Great article about the Atari Ireland arcade factory in Tipperary, along with several never-before-scene photos: https://arcadeblogger.com/2017/08/25/atari-ireland/

Pages 30-31 from that issue feature an ad for the 5200 ("Atari Introduces the 5200 SuperSystem"). Jump down to pages 64-70 to the article about the 5200, but the photo shown is the earlier "Video System X" model. Guess they didn't get any updated photos from Atari to use? To Arnie Katz's credit, he recognizes the immediate problem with the controllers and notes they made a poor substitute for paddles with the pack-in game, saying, "If Atari doesn't intend to produce a paddle, it would be a kindness to electronic gamers to refrain from creating games that require such a command device." In the next paragraph, he goes on to say the system has 64K! But then later says, "With the exception of Galaxian, all titles in the first group of releases are copied from either the computer or VCS catalogs with only the slightest changes." Katz then claims Super Breakout "is certainly one of the best games ever packaged with a videogame system(!?), it isn't exactly fresh and new." Super Breakout was the worst pack-in IMO. Friend of mine got the system as soon as it came out (late 1982) and playing that game with those controllers was such a letdown for a system that had been hyped all year, especially if you'd had already played the Atari computer version, which came out in 1979, and you realized what the next-gen system really was (an Atari 400)! Trying to play a paddle game with a joystick was a huge step backwards. I ended up getting a 5200 sometime in 1983, for Pac-Man more than anything else, but my copy of Super Breakout sat in the box until I sold the system.

I've seen that pcb with the switch before. It's for a 2-in-1 cart. The labeled chips are most likely copies, as I see a bunch of Activision games there

I've never seen that version either, only this one: http://www.ataricompendium.com/game_library/unreleased/vcs_nr_proline_1.png Notice the one in the flyer has a divot on the top of the joystick knob.

From my interview with Atari designer Tom Palecki, he mentioned Barry Marshall designed the MindLink, and Tom designed the logo for it: http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/interviews/tom_palecki/interview_tom_palecki.html

Maybe not (yet), but there's a lot more Atari 8-bit computer and 5200 owners out there 🙂

If anybody can do it, it's you, Bob 🙂

RickR: You're right. The PM graphics are only 1-color. That explains why Atari's Pac-Man opted not to fill in the eyes; doing so avoided the flickering problems that plague Ms. Pac-Man. As for trying to reproduce the arcade's screen ratio, the home version has black space around all 4 sides. If that's what programmer Steven Szymanski was trying to accomplish, there wouldn't have been space on the top and bottom (the maze is still in a horizontal layout). As for delays being intentionally programmed in, I don't know, but I know nothing seems to move across the screen without split-second pausing. Nothing seems to move smoothly. I'd sooner chalk it up to being Symanski's first effort on that hardware and not being experienced enough with it to do a better job (or just being the wrong guy for the job, much like Tod Frye was with Pac-Man). GCC seemed to knock it out of the park with the VCS version (that and Vanguard were their first 2 VCS games). And yes, the 7800 is a smoking faithful version, probably the best arcade conversion on that system. Rick- the 7800's Maria chip certainly doesn't allow an unlimited number of sprites. I remember the number being touted BITD to be 100. Regarding the 7800 being on par with the NES (other than the sound), the 7800 wasn't designed for games with detailed backgrounds; it was designed to move a lot of objects on the screen w/o flicker (Asteroids, Robotron, Joust, etc). Atari had their chance with the 7800 and basically sat on it for 2 years. When they decided to get back into the market, they didn't have anything new, so they "un-mothballed" the 7800 and redesigned the VCS and 800 hardware again. Atari also had the chance to release the NES in the U.S. and fumbled that away, too.

The 5200 version of Pac-Man was quite amazing at the time when it came out in late 1982 (compared to the rotten VCS version). It was even better than the 400/800 version that was released a few months earlier (which lacked intermissions and proper monster AI). But the first time I played 5200 Ms. Pac-Man, it was apparent that although it looked better (esp from screenshots), it didn't run nearly as smooth as Pac-Man. The mazes were also smaller, having all this wasted screen space around them. On top of that, it flickered like crazy! In fact, it shows the same flickering issues that VCS Ms. Pac-Man had, due to the use of vertical separation and variable flicker. However, neither of those techniques were required for the 8-bit hardware since that allowed for up to 4 independent sprites (called "player/missile graphics"), instead of the 2 the VCS hardware offered. And the 4 missiles can be combined to basically make another 'sprite', giving you 5. Just look at the 1st Ms. Pac-Man intermission - you have 2 Pac-Man characters and 2 monsters, and when all 4 are on the same horizontal 'line' at the end, the 2 monsters alternately flicker - you can't even get a screenshot of them both at that point, and there's only FOUR objects on the screen! Rather shocking to see just how poorly this version was implemented, being it's basically GCC's flagship title, and considering just how amazing the VCS version is.