Pac-Man is an action maze chase video game the player controls the eponymous character through an enclosed maze. At bottom left is the player's life count, and at bottom right the level icon (in this case a cherry). The ghosts are in the center with Pac-Man below them. The game remains one of the highest-grossing and best-selling games, generating more than $14 billion in revenue (as of 2016 ) and 43 million units in sales combined, and has an enduring commercial and cultural legacy, commonly listed as one of the greatest video games of all time. The character of Pac-Man has become the official mascot of Bandai Namco Entertainment. Pac-Man was a widespread critical and commercial success, leading to several sequels, merchandise, and two television series, as well as a hit single by Buckner & Garcia. The original Japanese title of Puck Man was derived from the Japanese phrase "Paku paku taberu" which refers to gobbling something up the title was changed to Pac-Man for the North American release. The in-game characters were made to be cute and colorful to appeal to younger players. Although the inspiration for the Pac-Man character was the image of a pizza with a slice removed, Iwatani has said he also rounded out the Japanese character for mouth, kuchi ( Japanese: 口). Iwatani wanted to create a game that could appeal to women as well as men, because most video games of the time had themes of war or sports. Game development began in early 1979, directed by Toru Iwatani with a nine-man team. Eating large flashing dots called "Power Pellets" causes the ghosts to temporarily turn blue, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for bonus points. The player controls Pac-Man, who must eat all the dots inside an enclosed maze while avoiding four colored ghosts. In North America, the game was released by Midway Manufacturing as part of its licensing agreement with Namco America. Pac-Man, originally called Puck Man in Japan, is a 1980 maze action video game developed and released by Namco for arcades. Pac-Man,” which also became a huge hit.Single-player, multiplayer (alternating turns) (For its second season, “Pac-Man” was teamed up with “Rubik, the Amazing Cube,” which suggests something about the quality of programming we’re talking about here.)Īnd in 1982, even Namco would capitalize on the craze by creating a sequel arcade game, “Ms. A Saturday morning animated series debuted on ABC in 1982, which aired for two seasons. The music duo of Buckner & Garcia released a single, “Pac-Man Fever” that hit No. For a couple of years in the early 1980s, Pac-Man was one of the hottest licensed properties around. Once gamers figured out there were patterns to be learned that would allow them to run up high scores – a huge source of pride among the gaming crowd – they began dropping more and more quarters into the machines – Pac-Man reportedly sold 100,000 arcade units and made $1 billion in its first year of release.īefore long, a popular game had become an enormous pop culture phenomenon. Clyde, the orange ghost, is easy to turn tail and run when Pac-Man gets too close. For example, each of the four ghosts has a distinct personality: Blinky, the red ghost, chases Pac-Man directly while Pinky and Inky – the pink and blue ghosts – try to work their way in front of Pac-Man. Iwatani’s team took care to embed certain idiosyncrasies into the game. And he wanted something with cute characters and bright colors so kids would be attracted to the game. Game designer Toru Iwatani wanted to make a game that didn’t involve shooting or sports so it would appeal to girls as well as to boys. It was decided to change the name for release in other countries because of how easy it would be for kids with markers to deface the machines by changing the “P” to. There, the Namco company called it Puck Man, because the round shape of the star character reminded the game’s creators of a hockey puck. The first thing to know about Pac-Man: When it was first released in Japan, it wasn’t called Pac-Man. later that year and when it did, it would inspire a generation of gamers. Forty years ago today, the video game Pac-Man was released in arcades in Japan.
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