
Masaya Nakamura, Japanese arcade pioneer, has died - jrwan
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-30/japanese-arcade-pioneer-father-of-pac-man-has-died
======
baldfat
I still loved the fact that I was a kid who played in a bowling league and the
arcade was always mind blowing. First mind blowing games were Asteroids and
Space Invaders for me. Those games were a ton better then the other games.
Then Pac Man and Donky Kong took it to a whole new level. It was a magical
time and nothing at home could match it. Personally I liked Mrs. Pac-Man more.

~~~
rollthehard6
The most amazing thing from that time for me was the first time I heard
Defender, let alone saw it. The sound of those Williams games is as memorable
as the visuals and gameplay.

~~~
jjw1414
Agreed. There was definitely a characteristic "Williams sound collection" that
was common across many of their video games (Joust, Defender, Robotron 2048,
etc.), and pinball machines, too (e.g. Gorgar). You didn't even have to turn
around - you knew a Williams game as soon as you heard it. Personal favourite
= Joust respawning sound.

~~~
daodedickinson
Robotron's sound on the actual machine is overwhelming even today. And the
amazing color splash between every level is absolutely entrancing/mesmerizing.

~~~
koz1000
Want to know the best part? Nearly all of those signature sounds were
generated _algorithmically_ by the processor on the sound board.

The main program would feed some values into a series of feedback loops and
shifts to generate the waves before pushing them out the DAC. Game programmers
would just play around with various vectors until they found something that
sounded interesting.

The whole shebang ran in 2KiB of ROM firmware and 128 _bytes_ of RAM. At 894
kilohertz.

This dude reverse engineered the 6802 code and translated it to C#. Pretty
amazing:

[http://www.lomont.org/Software/Misc/Robotron/](http://www.lomont.org/Software/Misc/Robotron/)

Next time on our show we'll talk about the magic of palette cycling. Jarvis
still uses this on his games to this very day. Kind of his signature now,
right?

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nodja
Toru Iwatani made make pac-man. Masaya Nakamura is the founder of namco. Why
am I seeing a blatant wrong headline all over the news?

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tinus_hn
If they used the correct headline, normal people wouldn't click. Normal people
don't know what Namco is.

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louhike
If they do not know what Namco is, I'm not sure they would be interested in
him. Now everybody in the comments is talking about PacMan. Namco made/makes a
lot of other great games worth talking about.

~~~
sbuttgereit
Absolutely. Particularly the early 80s. Many of those games filled too many
childhood hours to count. Ironically, I didn't like Pac Man so much (back then
or today), though I recognize it as being a great game and understand why it
would appeal to many.

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artofcode
Please note that this is not Toru Iwatani, who designed Pac Man.

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Beltiras
Is the golden age of arcade gaming over? I can't remember going into an arcade
psyched about playing any game. It's all dance pads, racing games and FPS.
Frogger, Pac-man, Gauntlet, Tetris, Mortal Kombat, Warlock, those were
exciting games. Maybe it's just the gramps in me yelling about the kids on my
lawn.

~~~
erickhill
It's been over for a very long time. You can still find the 'classics' but you
really have to hunt for them. To find them all in one place is truly unusual
these days, as they are referred to as 'retro arcades' and most cities don't
even have one. My son thinks of them as old-fashioned.

Hard to wrap my head around that sometimes, but it is what it is.

~~~
rb808
If you're in NY region/Philly look for Barcarde - its a chain - they have all
the classics. eg
[http://barcadebrooklyn.com/games/](http://barcadebrooklyn.com/games/)

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protomyth
I remember the local Team Electronics used the Pac-Man on the Atari 8-bit
computers (400/800) to show how much better it was than the Atari 2600.

I will remember Pac-Man as a game I put way too much time into. I will
remember it fondly along side Wizard of Wor, Time Pilot, Mr. Do, and Sinistar.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Amazing really that the 2600 port was a total mess while the 400/800 port was
widely regarded as one of the best arcade conversions of the day. It always
surprises me that the 2600 is remembered so fondly in popular culture while
the fantastic Atari 8-bit home computers have faded into obscurity vs.
contemporaries like the C64, Apple II, Spectrum et al.

~~~
Malic
True. The commercially available Atari 2600 Pac-Man was not a visual treat.
And that is an understatement. The lead developer for Pac-Man at Atari
considered it a rushed effort.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-
Man_(1982_video_game)#Rece...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-
Man_\(1982_video_game\)#Reception)

Since then, however, some hobby developers have taken another swing at Pac-Man
on the 2600. The 400/800 port still holds the crown but the following is an
impressive difference in my opinion:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA3mIWzwrZk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA3mIWzwrZk)

~~~
WillPostForFood
Wow, that is an incredible effort at reproducing Pac Man on the 2600. Kudos to
the person who did it, DINTAR816, I wish they were around back in the 80's.

[http://retrogamingmagazine.com/2015/09/07/pac-man-on-
atari-2...](http://retrogamingmagazine.com/2015/09/07/pac-man-on-
atari-2600-receives-much-improved-version-by-homebrew-developer/)

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typetypetype
There is definitely something to be said for the time when video games were
created by small teams of people instead of being huge blockbuster efforts.

~~~
skocznymroczny
Just like indie games today. The barrier to entry is lower than ever, with
lots of high-quality engines available for free (or free to try), and big
asset marketplaces.

~~~
typetypetype
Seeking recommendations!

~~~
drinkjuice
Though still in early access, I kind of adore Catacomb Kids, and I'm even more
of a fan after I looked up one of the GDC talks [1] of the creator he
mentioned in his blog [2].

[1] [http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021877/Constructing-the-
Cataco...](http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021877/Constructing-the-Catacombs-
Procedural-Architecture)

[2] [http://catakids.tumblr.com/](http://catakids.tumblr.com/)

I'm not affiliated, and I'm not saying there aren't others that may be worth
your money more, but I am absolutely convinced that he has the heart and mind
in the right place when doing this, and it really shows. I'm hopeful to see
where it will go and what he'll come up with after it's finished.

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coleifer
He can finally realize his dream of being a ghost chasing Pac-Man.

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ageofwant
I understand the Inuit have many words that translate into English as 'snow',
same for Aramaic languages and 'sand'. So it stands to some reason that those
cultures have a deeper understanding of those things even if they just simply
assigned shorter symbols to things that can be described in any other language
"soft snow", "sand that drifts and collects behind bigger stones", and so on.
But because these symbols exist they can be natively manipulated and reasoned
about.

Hayao Miyazaki's work could not be replicated by an American and the same for
Masaya Nakamura. Maybe another from the same culture that comes with it's
unique cognitive patterns and world views. We should value our differences, it
benefits us all in curious and unexpected ways.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
You understand incorrectly:
[http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000405.h...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000405.html)

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duderific
I remember getting a little handbook that had all the "patterns" you could
learn to evade the ghosts. One of the top days of my youth was when I "turned
over" Pac-Man by topping 1,000,000 points, I think I was on the seventh key
(the little symbols that you could eat would progress through a series, ending
with the key symbol which would then repeat ad infinitum).

People would gather around the game console if you were really on a roll,
craning their necks to get a look...good times, good times.

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Pulce2
[https://soundcloud.com/user-12404636/pac-mans-
death](https://soundcloud.com/user-12404636/pac-mans-death)

~~~
grzm
Would you provide a description along with the link?

~~~
Pulce2
Description: :(

~~~
grzm
Please don't be snarky about it. Leaving lone URLs as comments is not helpful
to other members.

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sizzzzlerz
Game over <wa-wa-wa-wa-waaaaaa>

~~~
Pulce2
lol, "You're submitting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks." is new for me...

[https://youtu.be/dScq4P5gn4A?t=3m30s](https://youtu.be/dScq4P5gn4A?t=3m30s)

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kodfodrasz
I played it a lot as a kid, and only recently learned how complex the ghost
behaviours were (compared to what I beleived about them):

[http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-
pac-m...](http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-pac-man-
ghost-behavior)

~~~
gowld
When I read that, I was impressed how _simplistic_ they were.

canonical article:
[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3938/the_pacman_dossie...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3938/the_pacman_dossier.php)

~~~
kodfodrasz
> compared to what I _beleived_

I thought they were moving mostly randomly, when I was a kid starting to learn
programming.

~~~
duderific
I remember them moving randomly at first, then when they "caught sight" of you
they would start tracking you. Except for the orange one, who would always go
the "wrong" direction.

~~~
shultays
yeah, basically they have two modes. in chase mode they try to chase you in
their own algorithms and in scatter mode they go to their own corners.

orange one is special, even in chase mode, it stops chasing you when it is
close enough.

