Super Pac-Man 6-14-84

 

This prototype appears to be very very close the final version.  The date on the EPROM is a bit odd however.  It says 6-14 but the code itself seems to date to around late March or early April since Landon said he finished the game up in spring of that year.  This means that the date was most likely when the EPROMs were burnt rather than the code date.

An interesting difference in this version is that the scrolling message is not shown when played on a PAL system.  This is most likely due to the timing loop for the scrolling code not working properly on PAL systems which was corrected in the final code (sort of).  The scrolling message is present when played on an NTSC system though.

While this version has the easter egg in it, the code to activate it has been disabled.  This was yet another compile time option that Landon put in the code and it defaulted to off.  Interestingly the final bytes of code in this version are filled with the text 'PIRATES BEWARE' which only appears in this prototype and the Best Electronics prototype due to the copy protection still being enabled.  As the final versions were compiled from code, the copy protection was disabled so this message does not appear.

 

This is what you'll see on a PAL system

 

Those look like White Castle slidesr to me

 

This game is so corny...

 

Atari has requested a steroid test on Pac-Man

 

 

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