Overview
awbreaker is a Pac-Man clone programmed by John Harris and released in 1982 for the Atari 8-bit family by On-Line Systems. It was widely lauded by reviewers, and became a major seller. The story of both its creation and Harris's Atari 8-bit implementation of Frogger form a portion of Steven Levy's 1984 book, Hackers.
In 1982 Atari, which licensed the home rights to Pac-Man, unsuccessfully sought an injunction against the sale of Jawbreaker and Gobbler, another On-Line computer game, which Atari claimed unduly resembled Pac-Man. On-Line's Ken Williams denied Atari's claim but was uncertain of the outcome, stating "If this opens the door to other programmers ripping off my software, what happened here was a bad thing".
John Harris also programmed the Apple II port (1981) as well as a version for the Atari 2600 released by Tigervision in 1982. Because of technical limitations, Atari 2600 Jawbreaker is not a Pac-Man clone and is different than the Atari 8-bit game.
- Developers
- On-Line Systems
- Publishers
- On-Line Systems
- Platform
- Apple II
- Genre
- Action
- Alternate Names
- No information available
- Video
- No information available
