The most depressing thing you will ever see

[Pete Rittwage]

I was hoping they'd hit a cart into those apartment Windows or something so someone would come out and kick their ass. That would have been a great moment in YouTube.

[thom_m]

That port was crap and you know it. He might not be an asshole, but he made one of the crappiest games of all time and influenced the crash of 83' to some extent. Have you ever played Pac-Man on 2600? Imagine being a little kid that just spent today's equivalent of around 40$ to play Pacman and ended up with the abomination that is Pac-Man on Atari 2600.

Actually, here in Brazil, where the Pac-Man arcade wasn't that common, the 2600 version - the only one a lot of brazilians were familiar with - is fondly remembered by lots of 30-year-olds today. It's still a fun game to play, if you don't compare it to the real thing.

Now back to topic: this "i'm so muthafuckin tough" attitude is getting popular among brazilian teenagers as well. All the kids are is just so full of themselves, "so rad, so gangsta". Go figure...

[wingzrow]

[JimmyDean]

Yeah, but the guy took the money and ran. Don't get me wrong, Pac-Man is cool, but bottom line is the guy could have programmed a much better game. I don't hate it, it just could have been better, ya know?

Edit: Wow, that picture of all those cabs... Heartbreaking.

[diskoboy]

Okay - THAT is the most depressing thing I've ever seen

I think I see a Spy Hunter in that second picture...

[JimmyDean]

How could anyone with a heart do that to those cabs? But, in all seriousness, that makes me pissed. To just throw them in a big pile and let them rot. Its sickening.

[Lady Jaye]

Yeah, but the guy took the money and ran. Don't get me wrong, Pac-Man is cool, but bottom line is the guy could have programmed a much better game. I don't hate it, it just could have been better, ya know?

Have you ever watched the documentary Once Upon Atari, in which Howard Scott Warshaw interviews his former Atari colleagues? In it, Tod Fry said that the problem with 2600 Pac-Man was that his bosses refused to allow more memory for the game. He did what he could with the limitation that were imposed to him.

Just as Howard Scott Warshaw's E.T. game was rushed not because of lack of profesionalism on his part but because Atari gave him impossible deadlines to design a game from scratch, with no time to finetune the game or do any quality assurance on it.

[JimmyDean]

Did not know that. Yeah, some 2600 carts had some extra ram on the cart, right? I think that the supercharger did. Anyway, I was not aware that it was a piece of crap due to the technical limitations. Wait... didn't the 2600 have a cost-reduced version of the MOS 6502? I think it was called the 6507.

[Lady Jaye]

For technical questions about the 2600, I'm really not the best person to answer you. I do know that the capacity of the carts grew with time because of the use of bankswitching (basically a way to cheat around the memory limitations), but aside from that, others here or at atariage are better resources than me.

[rpepper9]

(That Bubsy cart killed a Genesis. Justified destruction, imo.)

Board looks intact, I bet it would still work!

[HappehLemons]

....You do understand by posting the video you're giving it more attention, right?

[Greg2600]

Some morons on Atari Age did a video smashing Coleco cartridges for the 2600, in a thread where Albert was asking for them in exchange for store credit.