Pac-Man

Did You Know?

• Early American promotional material used the name Snapper before Pac-Man was selected.
• The four ghosts have unique AI: Blinky gives direct chase; Pinky and Inky try to position themselves in front of Pac-Man; Clyde switches between chasing and fleeing depending on his distance.

Development

After acquiring the struggling Japanese division of Atari in 1974, Namco began producing its own video games in-house. Company president Masaya Nakamura created a small video-game development group that studied NEC-produced microcomputers. Toru Iwatani, a 24-year-old employee, was among the first assigned to the division. He created Namco's first video game Gee Bee in 1978, which was unsuccessful but helped the company gain a foothold. Iwatani felt that the crude graphics and violence of arcade games limited their appeal to men, and that arcades were seen as seedy environments. For his next project, he chose to create a nonviolent, cheerful game that appealed mostly to women, centering it around eating. His game was initially titled Pakkuman, based on the Japanese onomatopoeia 'paku paku taberu', referencing the mouth movement of opening and closing in succession.

Ports

Pac-Man found its way onto many home consoles and computers. The most notorious version was the 1982 Atari 2600 port by Tod Frye and Atari, Inc. It drew heavy criticism for how poorly it matched the arcade original, especially the ghosts' flickering effect, yet it still sold over seven million copies. Atari also put out versions for the Intellivision, VIC-20, Commodore 64, Apple II, IBM PC compatibles, TI-99/4A, ZX Spectrum, and Atari 8-bit machines. A 1983 port for the Atari 5200 was seen as a big step up from the 2600 one. Namco itself made a version for the Family Computer in 1984, one of the first third-party titles for that system, and also one for the MSX computer. That Famicom version later came to North America's NES through Tengen, an Atari Games subsidiary, as an unlicensed black-cartridge release during a dispute over Nintendo's quality control. Namco officially re-released it in 1993 with new packaging. In 1990, the Famicom version appeared as a budget title on the Famicom Disk System via Disk Writer kiosks. That same year, Namco put out a Game Boy port that let two players cooperate using the Game Link Cable. A Game Gear version followed in 1991 with similar multiplayer support. For the game's 20th anniversary in 1999, Namco brought the Game Boy version to the Game Boy Color, pairing it with Pac-Attack in a package called Pac-Man: Special Color Edition. Also in 1999, Namco and SNK jointly released a Neo Geo Pocket Color port that came with a circular Cross Ring attachment to lock the d-pad into four-directional movement.

Reception

When Pac-Man first appeared in North America at the 1980 AMOA show, the reaction was lukewarm. Play Meter magazine described it as a cute game that tends to grow on players, which is unusual for that type of title, but found the sound effects enjoyable only for a short time before they became irritating. After its full release, however, the game far surpassed expectations, earning widespread praise and commercial triumph. By July 1982, Electronic Games ranked Pac-Man among the best trackball-spinning arcade games, placing it above Tempest. In 1982, Games magazine reviewed home versions, calling the Atari 5200 port a splendid reproduction with altered maze layouts for TV, while the Atari 2600 version had much weaker graphics but remained one of the console's top titles. Both versions suffered from joystick controls that made quick turns difficult compared to the arcade. In Japan, Pac-Man started as a modest hit, overshadowed by Namco's own Galaxian, which appealed to a male audience used to shooting games. Eventually, Pac-Man grew very popular, becoming Japan's highest-earning arcade game of 1980 and ending Space Invaders' two-year reign, shifting the market from space shooters to comical action games. It ranked fourth in Japan for 1981.

Legacy

Pac-Man holds eight Guinness World Records from the 2008 Gamer's Edition, including the title for the most successful coin-operated game. In 2010, creator Toru Iwatani accepted a certificate confirming that 293,822 Pac-Man arcade cabinets had been installed worldwide, a record first set in 2005. By 2009, Guinness found Pac-Man was the most recognizable video game character in the United States, known to 94% of people, just ahead of Mario at 93%. The Strong National Museum of Play added Pac-Man to its World Video Game Hall of Fame in 2015. The game sparked real-world recreations like Pac-Manhattan, which earned a Guinness record for the largest Pac-Man game in 2004. In business, the "Pac-Man defense" describes a takeover target that turns around and tries to buy its would-be acquirer, inspired by the game's power pellets. Mathematicians named the "Pac-Man renormalization" after the character due to its visual resemblance in studies of the Mandelbrot set. The name has been adopted as a nickname for boxer Manny Pacquiao and football player Adam Jones. In 2012, Pac-Man entered the permanent collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art as one of fourteen video games in its first wave. During the 2016 Summer Olympics closing ceremony, a Tokyo 2020 preview showed Pac-Man and ghosts racing along a running track. By 1982, Midway had around 95 to 105 licensees selling Pac-Man merchandise, including a Pac-Man telephone from AT&T, with over 500 products in total.