Pac-Man didn’t make it to Atari 8-bit computers until 1982, but that doesn’t mean that people were short of some dot-eating maze-based funtimes until then.
Nope; we had John Harris’ Jawbreaker, an excellent Pac-Man clone that was extremely well-received at the time of its 1981 release — and which was so uncomfortably close to Pac-Man that Atari ended up suing publisher On-Line Systems.
Atari’s suit was ultimately unsuccessful, but Harris chose to play it safe and follow up the original Jawbreaker with a successor that was less obviously based on the Namco classic. But that’s a story for another day!
