[Kapow]

Everyone forgets about Pac-Man, that was another huge contributor to the crash. The 2600 couldn't handle 5 sprites, so they used one sprite for all the ghosts and showed one per frame. The flickering ghosts against the bright blue background was physically painful to watch.

They estimated 10 million consoles were actively being played, so they made 12 million copies. They sold 7 million, and that's before returns. 7 million people who would think twice before buying another Atari game.

[kenjackson]

Wasn't it the Atari version of Pac Man with "wafers"?

Nothing beats game programming in the 80s. IMO, the golden age of programming.

[jeffwass]

Are you talking about the bonus 'fruit'?

That was he one thing I complained most about with the Atari PacMan. I don't think I ever noticed the flickering ghosts specifically, or even how different the bird layout was vs the arcade version.

But instead of a cherry/orange/pretzel that moved around the screen, the bonus fruit was a dark-brown square inside another slightly-larger light-brown square. It didn't move, it didn't look good, and as a kid I felt like this was the classic example of either the game designers cutting corners or limitations of the system.

I used to joke about this specific example as one of the key reasons to move on to better consoles when they came around.