Pac-Man



Pac-Man was an arcade game originally released by Namco, which was developed for home use on the Atari systems by Atari.

Gameplay
The gameplay involves maneuvering the yellow character Pac-Man through a series of mazes, gobbling up all the pellets. However, Pac-Man's progress is opposed by four ghosts: Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde. Pac-Man can only eat these ghosts by eating one of the four special power pellets placed throughout the maze. Once Pac-Man eats every pellet on the screen, the level is over. Occasionally, fruit will show up that give Pac-Man bonus points. Every 10,000 points, Pac-Man gains an extra life. The game is supposed to loop forever, although the 256th level is glitched and unbeatable.

Scoring

 * Pellet -- 10 points
 * Power pellet -- 50 points
 * Blue ghost -- 200 points (first), 400 (second), 800 (third), and 1600 (fourth)
 * Fruit prizes
 * Cherry -- 100 points
 * Strawberry -- 300 points
 * Orange -- 500 points
 * Apple -- 700 points
 * Grape -- 1000 points
 * Galaxian Flagship -- 2000 points
 * Bell -- 3000 points
 * Key -- 5000 points

Atari 2600 Version
Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 is a port of the original arcade game. The game was designed by Tod Frye, who showed them a prototype of the game. Instead of letting Frye finish the game, Atari published the port.

Of the differences that exist between this version and the original arcade version, the most notable of them is that the ghosts are all one color and tend to flicker a lot; also, the various fruit prizes are replaced by a single prize called the vitamin which is worth 100 points when eaten. The player starts off with four lives and gets a new life with each screen cleared instead of at 10,000 points (up to nine lives can be stored up at a time).

Atari manufactured 12 million cartridges of the game, but only about 7 million copies were sold. The game was a huge failure and many consumers asked for refunds. This was one of the many games that led to the Video Game Crash of 1983.

Trivia
The Atari 5200 and 8-bit home computer versions use the Atari logo in place of the Galaxian flagship as the fruit prize that appears between the grape and the bell.