It’s been about four years since the Intellivision Homebrew Jr. Pac-Man was first released. Unfortunately, the version released back in 2017 was, to put it politely, riddled with bugs. The kind of bugs that it seemed to me could have been easily avoided had someone, anyone, tested the game and ran it through its paces. Well, be careful what you ask for… I have recently received a brand new PCB in October 2021, from “REV” on the AA forums that purports to squash ALL of these bugs. So, did Intellivision Revolution make good on their promise to fix Jr. Pac-Man? And how do you get your copy fixed? I plan to get into that, but first, let’s review some of those bugs and my history as a Intellivision Jr. Pac-Man beta tester.
One of the first bugs I encountered centers mostly around two-player mode games. On the original release, on some Intellivisions in two-player games, a pink block would appear randomly on the game maze, sometimes more than once, and would block the player’s movement. Once it appeared it would sometimes show up on single-player games as well. It was a pretty egregious bug. I pointed it out on a discussion on the Atariage forums. Some people were guessing it was probably just faulty hardware, but eventually I did test it out on more than one Intellivision and was able to get confirmation from a few other players experiencing the same issue.
The second bug I had encountered was what I call pre-mature maze completion. This is where Jr. Pac did not finish eating all of the dots on the maze, and yet somehow the game thinks you have finished the round and moves you on to the next round.
I noticed skipping the music by pressing “1” on the keypad would skip the movie animation but did not stop the music from playing.
Using the sound test and playing some sounds, they would continue playing when a game was started.
And Finally, one bug which I did not even mention in my review video, was the fact that frequently after consuming a ghost, their eyes would randomly roam the map, mostly in a large circle, but not go back to the ghost cage. I call these “eye loops”. This would happen frequently on single and two-player maps.
On February 28th, 2018, I was contacted by “Rev” from Intellivision Revolution and was asked if I would like to be a beta tester for a new improved version of Jr. Pac-Man they were working on. I was more than happy to. A month later I received my first beta version. That same day I did some testing and pointed out a few issues to “Rev”, some of which included the following:
Sometimes when playing you would be awarded a free JR. Pac more than once. I also pointed out an “eye loop” I noticed right off that bat (jrpac28.wmv). I’ll show it here. I mentioned there was very little blue time awarded going from level 6, to the intermission and into level 7 and that the Leader of the Pac image sometimes did not display after completing a game.
About a week later, I also observed the bouncy candy in the later levels were not awarding the proper score. This is difficult to notice since the score is not displayed on the screen, but when the award is supposed to be 5K each and when two are consumed and we are not awarded a free Junior, that made it stand out.
“Rev” got back to me not long after than with a post on April 11, 2018.
On the issue with little to no blue time being added going from level 6 to level 7 – Correction made.
Regarding the leader of the pack Image not appearing after playing. I was informed it only appears in Atari or Mattel mode, not in Arcade mode.
Regarding Jr. Pac-Man rewarding you more than one Jr. Pac in a game, I was informed this was done by design, but they did modify it for the Arcade mode to only award one per game and left it the same for Atari & Mattel modes.
Regarding the game not awarding the proper score for the bouncy candy, that was also corrected.
As for the ghost loop I found, well they claimed to have fixed it. I had to say I was impressed. Later that evening “Rev” posted the revised ROM.
A couple of days later after doing some testing on April 13th I reported the following issues:
1) The free Jr. is being awarded at 10,000 regardless of your setting in the options, no matter what mode you start on. I was awarded a free Jr. at 25,000 points when my setting was for 15,000. So something weird was going on with the free Jr being awarded at random scores.
2) The endless ghost eye loop is back. On level 2 of Extra-Normal levels it happens (eyeloop2.wmv)
On April 15th, I was given a new ROM, version 33. This seemed to fix free Jr. always being awarded at 10,000 points, but the pesky eye loop remained persistent, which I reported the next day.
I received a new ROM version 34, the next day which fixed one eye loop but others were introduced.
I pointed out on April 19th, the snow levels do not flash when the level is completed. I also pointed out a few more eye loops.
On April 22, I was handed ROM version 36. With this version, I did notice a drastic improvement on the eyeloop algorithm, but the problem still occurred.
On April 29, I received ROM version 37. With this, “Rev” claimed the eye loop problem was squashed, however after about 30 minutes of testing, I found this not to be the case. Will this ever get fixed? “Rev” also mentioned the screen not flashing in snow mode was by design.
On May 3rd, I received ROM version 38. No promises were made. After about an hour of playing I was unable to find any eye loops, then after another couple of hours of testing, looks like the problem was finally licked!
On May 12th, I received ROM version 39 the last version I checked. All was well.
I had made many other suggestions I thought might be helpful, but “Rev” pointed out at this point in the development the game was pretty much maxed out on memory and that any design changes would require a huge effort to put into place. All this is true, which I completely understood.
Having said that, now let’s talk about this new version of Jr. Pac-Man I had just received in late October 2021, some three years after concluding my beta testing and four years after the official release. After giving the game a spin for a couple of hours, I can say without hesitation all of the bugs which affect gameplay seem to be squashed. The only quirky things I noticed are the following. If you happen to start the sound demo then, start a game in a later level, which happens to be an intermission, I believe level 7 on one of the game modes is an intermission, you will still hear the demo sound briefly play. This is an improvement over what I had initially reported. The only other thing which happens from time to time, you can occasionally pass through the ghosts without dying. I believe this to be by design and not a bug.
Even with all of these issues, Jr. Pac-Man was still awarded game of the year in 2017 just inching out “The Lost Caves of Kroz” and deservedly so. That’s how good it is. Now, how do you go about getting your “fixed” copy?
Update
I recently contacted “Rev” from Intellivisionrevolution on October 25th, 2021, asking the question of how to get your copy. He asked me to direct people over to his website and hit him up on the “contact us” link to swap your defective game with the fixed version.
http://www.intellivisionrevolution.com/contact-us
He also mentioned the digital ROM package will be available in a couple of weeks over on David Harley’s website at:
http://intellivision.us/roms.php
https://youtu.be/PDsN3g_aQIE
