Mastery #16: Pac-Man (Atari 2600)

 

        

        I don't have that much to really say about this game. Many people know just how terrible of a port this game is compared to it's arcade counter-part. One of the most difficult parts about playing this game is that the ghost flicker on screen so much sometimes you can't really tell if they are blinking to where you can eat them or if they are just flickering normally. The arcade game made it very clear when a ghost was eatable, even had a sound effect to tell you when they were edible. But the Atari 2600 version nah, it does play a sound effect but even when the sound ends you still have maybe like 2-3 seconds still you can eat the ghost. I died so many times because of this. 

https://retroachievements.org/game/13094

    Most of the achievements to this set was fairly simple with the exception of 2 that caused me a lot of problems. Some of the cheevos were slightly difficult like the getting 5 lives total, or the reaching 5k score. Normally it doesn't look that bad and truth be told it wasn't really now looking back on it. But what really caused me the most trouble was the 10k points & the 9 lives. And those only proved difficult because of one reason. It was because what level I was on playing the game on. 

    

    For anyone that didn't know the Atari 2600 had a switch on the console that controlled different difficulty levels for games. Most of the time it would just change the speed of the game or just throw more enemies your way, but in the specific case to Pac-Man it would just speed up Pac-Man. Which in hindsight now is an ABSOLUTE MUST to earn the two cheevos that caused me the most problems. As you progress in this game the ghosts move faster but Pac-Man remains the same speed the entire time so when you get to the later levels the ghost move faster. So in mode 1 or I guess on difficulty 1 Pac-Man moves rather slow. So getting through the first 3 levels is fine but once you start getting to level 5 it become just way too difficult.

        

    

    So after I moved up the difficulty of the game the last two cheevos became much easier cause Pac-Man could actually keep distance from the ghosts. The other huge factor I used to master this was the "CC Pattern". This is a pattern in the map that you can move to avoid the ghosts almost every time. This pattern was created by Casey Coenen and can be found on the gamefaq page for Pac-Man. This pattern only applies to the Atari 2600 version too apparently. But it frustrates me that it says if you stick to this pattern you can go on forever, that's not true. Not true at all. I am sure they didn't actually mean it that it can work forever but still I didn't think there were going to be so many hiccups with it still. I died a handful of times, most of the time I had to go off the normal path just to avoid death. But I must say once I got the hang of it & understood what the path was doing it's not that difficult adjust. 

    

   

    Overall the achievement set was good set & the game was well not the greatest but if you turn off the piercing sound it makes & pop on a 80's arcade remix it's not nearly as bad. 

Mastery #11: Garfield (Proto) (Atari 2600) - Archive Edition

     This is my Archive Edition of "Journey Through Retro Games & RetroAchievements". Why I call it my Archive Edition? Is because normally each blog post will be of me Mastering a game's achievements, meaning that I will create the post after I just completed the game. The Archive Edition will be games that I mastered before I started this blog. So spoiler alert but there will probably only be 11 Archive Edition posts. But like the number stated above, this was my 11th mastery, so it's the most recent mastery before I started this blog. 

    

    Not many people know there was a Garfield Atari 2600 game. I am not too familiar with the origin or the story behind it but quick glances online didn't show that much promise for me at the time. But this game was an EXTREMELY short game. Most Atari 2600 games are normally short like this so it's no surprise in anyway that the achievements (cheevos) was rather easy to get on this one. But for the most part the game consists of you jumping on the fence or houses while eating lasagna, avoiding Odie, & I guess saving Nermal? The game in it's entirety is like 2 minutes long not sure if there was more anticipated to the game or not. 

    

    I have always been a fan of Garfield from his comics to the 80's cartoon series. I still remember the very first dvd boxsets I really owned was 'Garfield & Friends' and 'Home Movies'. The opening song to Garfield & Friends was always stuck in my head growing up. My older brother would sing it a lot of times just throughout the house and it would be engraved into my head until today. I remember asking my brother where he got the song from because my brother was not to be one to watch cartoons with me at the time. I mean he was in High School while I was about to go into the 6th grade. Which I guess in retrospect now maybe even watching cartoons when going into the 6th grade was too old too hahaha. My brother told me he would see it in school, the school we went to often had tv's in a specific hallway that would just normally play ABC, NBC, or Fox. Even in elementary during the scholastic book day we use to have, I remember making a dive towards the Garfield books. Even as I got older they turned into great bathroom books, you know the times before cell phones had the entire internet in your pocket. 

    

    Anyway there isn't that much I can really say about this game that really hasn't already been said. It's such a interesting game in general cause how short it was. If I was younger and bought this game at full retail I would have been sad but I would have loved it just the same. Given it was a prototype though it's technically unfair to make that judgement & any repo carts out there should only be paying for the work it is to move the game to the actual Atari game chip. 

    

    The most difficult cheevo and I do mean difficult very lightly was the beat the game without getting hit or scoring a point. The only reason why this turned to be "difficult" was because it was a waiting game more than anything else. You see the lasagna moves across the screen & since the only option you have to move is by jumping it's inevitable that you will eat lasagna just trying to get to the end of the game. And that's really about it, sadly there was no music or anything to it. I would love to hear their rendition of the Garfield theme on the Atari 2600 (I know the year the cartoon came out was post Atari 2600 era). This game is mostly fun to just check out and have a quick play while waiting for your car to warm up or while you throw hot pockets in the microwave. https://retroachievements.org/game/17914