“Fuck The Press. Pac-man was very, very credible. The Things Just The Press doesn’t like were The Fact That it was The First”
invented the idea of a meaning and created a definition of what an adaptation was. There is a direct connection between 2600 Pac-man and arcade Pac-man, and I was influenced by arcade Pac-man when I made mine.” Details like colour fidelity and maze design might seem like obvious decisions in retrospect, but Tod is adamant that those pioneering days left zero road maps for game development. “Not only did I get to be a case study,” he says, “but I got to help make the rules, to help find out in that back and forth, which is only done through whole product development cycles.”
It’s also probable that the marketing hype behind the game heightened anticipation to unreasonable levels – which led to a rubber band reception when the game didn’t perfectly align with expectations.
During Tod’s development of Pac-man, Atari initiated a program of profit sharing (“incentive compensation bonus”) to prevent senior game programmers from leaving and becoming competitors – as in the case of third-party developer Activision. This reward system wasn’t instituted until after Pac-man was completed, but it was lifechanging for Tod. The agreement would award him $0.10 for every Pac-man game sold. After its wild success, Tod was suddenly very rich, eventually earning more than $1.3 million in incentives.
The financial windfall was both liberating and overstimulating. “It was overwhelming. It’s like winning the lottery,” he said. “I was a little defiant, and I was a little out of touch. You don’t deal with that as a 26-year-old. It was a lot of marijuana and cocaine. It completely changed my life.” Tod struggled with this wealth. “In those three years I went from a salary of $19,000 a year to a $320,000 royalty check. It did bend my brain, and it did honestly put my life in danger. But I survived. There are things I would do differently if I could have.”
He taped a photocopy of his first royalty check – $320,000 – to a public bulletin board at Atari HQ. “I have no idea why I did that,” he says. “I really don’t. It was a long time ago. It sounds like something I shouldn’t have done. Fuck if I know. I was only 26.”
Tod bought 15 vintage guitars, new suits, two Alfa Romeos, a ranch in New Mexico and more. With the pressure release valve of such success, more of Tod’s blunt intelligence came out, and to some colleagues, it seemed like arrogance. Did that resentment go both ways? “Some people viewed me as a genius and some saw me as a clown,” Tod explained in a 1997 documentary. The license plate of his new Alfa Romeo Spider read ‘PACMAN’.
By 1985, most of the money was gone. Bad advice and poor choices drained him financially. “I was on a downward spiral,” he said. “It was too much money, too fast. It was more power than responsibility, and it broke me.”
Some reviewers claim that 2600 Pac-man’s critical failure started a landslide that began Atari’s downfall. While Pac-man might have forced game buyers to look more cautiously at new releases, its negative impact has been overblown. “They say, ‘Pac-man and E.T. ruined a whole business!’” Todd laughs, “If I had that kind of power, I would productise it and retire! It’s foolishness. A lot of times people want a story – not even a particularly believable story. But they want a story.”
Yet he does realise that now, 37 years later, with an impressive software engineering career working on everything from videogames to solar power and AI – he’ll always be known for Pac-man.
“Pac-man was such a big part of my biography that I’m going to be living with it for the rest of my life,” he says. “I feel different ways about that. The amount of critical scorn it’s gotten and the swarms of tribal fanboys pissing all over it are not an ego booster. It actually is a self-esteem challenge. Some people want to say ‘Pac-man sucked!’ and I gave them that opportunity.” After Pac-man and the Swordquest series, Tod continued making games, both for the Atari 2600 and other later-generation consoles. But creating Pac-man for the Atari 2600 is an experience that will never leave him. It was more than just another project. Its cultural significance, popularity and reception made a lasting mark. “In some way,” he said, “who I am touched all those tens of millions of people.”
In the final analysis, 2600 Pac-man deserves a place in videogame history. Tod managed to capture the game’s essence in hardware that was nearly 100 times lesser than its arcade predecessor. “I have regrets,” he concludes. “But fundamentally, I’m proud. They tell me it’s a waste of time to defend Pac-man. I’ve got time to waste.”