Better is a relative term. The Atari 5200 has some pretty miserable controllers, probably among the worst ever designed. The ColecoVision's are no picnic either, but they're easier to replace/swap out if one were so motivated. Both systems have their strengths and weaknesses, though, and that includes game libraries. Even today, both systems have robust homebrew support, though I'd say that the ColecoVision has been pushed much farther in that area. Even though the ColecoVision has "better" homebrews, the Atari 5200 has the advantage of being the equivalent of a 16K Atari 400, so conversions from the Atari 8-bit computer library are fairly trivial. It was always an interesting battle between the two systems and remains so to this day if one chooses to unnecessarily pick sides (it's easy enough to enjoy both for their own merits). Personally, I prefer the ColecoVision for a variety of reasons, but there's nothing wrong with preferring the Atari 5200...

Good points, Rob. Each is probably the pinnacle of what can be achieved on their respective platforms, and, ultimately, that's all that really matters. It's not really relevant to definitively say which is "best" since they're such radically different platforms from two different eras.

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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director | Armchair Arcade, Inc.
[About Me]

Definitely, Spin, there are many,, many reasons why classic era programmers weren't able to do stuff like this. The developers of this Pac-Man had modern techniques and technology available (2KB extra RAM in the cart to add to the stock 65 bytes in the system, as well as necessary bank switching) to them to help them create the game, but the bottom line is that they still had to figure out how to do it, which was certainly no easy task. Again, going with either ColecoVision Pac-Man or Fairchild Pac-Man as the greatest conversion of the game ever created given the hardware is a toss-up, as you can make a case for each. (I should put up the Coleco Pac-Man cartridge (with multiple Pac games in it) as a video just as a point of comparison, though of course like Fairchild Pac-Man there are already several videos up))

The controllers are not bad and work well for the most part, but they really weren't designed for the precise movements a game like Pac-Man requires. That combined with the pinpoint collision detection and oversized character sprites and it definitely makes the game a bit more challenging than it should be. Given the speed of movement, that probably helps balance the gameplay more, though in my opinion it still errs on the harder side.

By the way, I'm still waiting on a personalized multi-cart (all known games) from the same developers of Pac-Man: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/149932-fs-fairchild-system-channel-... . That also has a version of Pac-Man on it, though without the extras like intermissions, full color box and manual, the latter of which are top notch.

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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director | Armchair Arcade, Inc.
[About Me]

The Fairchild was all but dead by 1979 anyway, so even if the game came out in 1981 it wouldn't have made a difference (the recent ColecoVision homebrew is also amazing, as it's as arcade perfect as can be for a system of that vintage). All that really mattered at that point was the Atari 2600, Intellivision and Odyssey2, as the Fairchild, RCA Studio II, Coleco Telstar Arcade, Astrocade and APF all had either misplayed their hands or never got off the starting blocks. However, the fact that the game puts the original 2600 version to shame is pretty telling, as is how good even Atari's own Ms. Pac-Man was, which came out not too long after and was not under "rush" programming conditions. The crash certainly wouldn't have been averted with a good version of Pac-Man (or ET for that matter), but it sure would have not created such obvious scapegoats (and frankly, contributors).

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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director | Armchair Arcade, Inc.
[About Me]

I was able to use my Archos. It seems to work great for everything but the Atari 2600, which has trouble syncing correctly with anything except one miscellaneous USB capture device that I have on a spare Dell XP system.

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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director | Armchair Arcade, Inc.
[About Me]