10 Video Games You Didn't Realise Were VERY Successful
3. Pac-Man (Atari Version)
E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial often gets sole blame for The Video Game Crash of 1983. Yes, it's true this failed movie tie-in nearly burned the gaming industry to the ground. However, it was the Atari port of Pac-Man that lit the match.
When the original blew up at arcades, gaming companies were desperate to port Pac-Man to every console imaginable.
Here's the problem. Despite's Pac-Man rudimentary design, it took 18 months to develop. Because of this, recreating it was no easy task, especially for Atari developer, Tod Frye, who was expected to create a port in six months. Worse still, Frye wasn't provided with any design specifications, meaning he had to guess how Pac-Man was programmed by playing it.
Despite Frye's best efforts, his Frankensteined Pac-Man was a glitchy travesty, with little resemblance to the original.
Considering this abomination played a hand at nearly collapsing the world of gaming, you would have every reason to believe it tanked.
Ironically, Pac-Man is the best-selling game on the Atari 2600. Selling eight million units, this utter crapfest (I can't believe I'm saying this), was the most successful game ever at the time.