Jawbreaker

Jawbreaker is a Pac-Man clone programmed by John Harris for the Atari 8-bit family and published by On-Line Systems. Released in 1981 before an official version of Pac-Man was available, it was widely lauded by reviewers, and became a major seller. The story of its creation and Harris's Atari 8-bit implementation of Frogger form a portion of Steven Levy's 1984 book, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Jawbreaker was ported to the Apple II in 1981 and Harris's different take on the game for the Atari 2600 was released the following year. Legal issues resulted in the 2600 port being the template for subsequent versions—for the Commodore 64 and TI-99/4A—and sold confusingly as both Jawbreaker and Jawbreaker II. Failed licensing and litigation In 1982, the initial Atari 800 version of Jawbreaker was so faithful to Pac-Man that the game (carelessly leaked by Harris himself) was assumed to be from Atari, Inc. (licensee for Pac-Man'''s home rights) itself. When one of these early copies found its way to Atari, they reached out to On-Line's Ken Williams. Attempts at a deal fell apart due to culture clashes between Atari and On-Line, particularly Williams and Harris. Williams instructed Harris to alter the artwork for the game to have a dental theme.