Super Pac-Man ?-??-84

 

This prototype was found on a reproduction cartridge put out by B&C Computervisions.  B&C had access to a lot of prototype cartridges when they bought some of Atari's inventory in the mid 80's and they put many of these prototypes on reproduction cartridges.  It is unknown exactly what the date is for the prototype, but given the similarities between this version and the 5200 1-26-84 prototype, we can assume it is from the same time period.


Differences

There is a rare bug that occasionally causes some of the doors not to open after eating all the keys.
One of the ghost monsters is purple instead of pink
The bonus timer is handled incorrectly.  Instead of being based on how many items you've eaten it starts after a certain amount of time has passed
The scrolling instructions on the title screen are missing
The easter egg is missing
The copyright font and color are different.  In this prototype the copyright is red and uses the same custom font as the rest of the title screen.  The prototype also includes an actual copyright symbol.   In the final the text is blue and uses the standard Atari font (the copyright symbol is actually just a C inside two parenthesis).  This was done to save space as there was no room to add all the necessary characters for the easter egg message to the custom font.
The # and * characters are missing from the custom character set.  This is the only prototype that is missing these characters.  It is thought that they were removed to free up some space (the 8-Bit computer version didn't need them) but for some reason this idea was abandoned and they reappear in later 8-Bit prototypes.

 


Notice the bonus has started even though I've only eaten two keys?

 

Note the purple ghost monster

 

Pac-Man does shrooms

 

Open wide for Pac-Man!

 

 

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