The cheek of Atari... This was originally a clone called Z-Man done by DJL Software, Atari who had the rights to Pac-Man for the computers wanted to get into the Spectrum, going to sue DJL but then made an agreement for this to be the official version while doing the bare minimum for the change. At least Ms Pac-Man also done by DJL felt like an arcade conversion and was considered a better game. Due to their overpricing, I mean really overpricing (£15 for the launch price was a lot of money back in the early 1980s in the UK) and for the fact that Jack Tramiel took over, they pulled out with a couple of prototypes that were in development. Atari had a few BBC Micro games but didn't even get to the Amstrad.

Wouldn't blame DJL as it was one of their earlier games (it was just two people David and John Looker), the game itself was only 16K (the lowest of the Spectrum), was an improved port of their earlier ZX81 Zuckman (claiming to be the first port of Pac-Man on that computer), they weren't happy about the price that Atari asked for, and they weren't the only one doing clones of games as it was common, even Ocean was founded as Spectrum Games doing clones. They stuck around for a while more so on the Amstrad doing some decent stuff and the Speedlock tape protection.