Everybody Loves Pac-Man

Pac-Man was an absolute phenomenon across the world. It was first released in 1980 by Namco in Japan and Midway licensed it for distribution in the US. Pac-Man was universally popular and transcended traditional gender barriers attracting an audience of female and male gamers of all ages. The game is quite possibly the most famous arcade release of all time and it has firmly established itself as an icon of popular culture.

Pac-Man featured a new style of game-play altogether casting the player in the role of a yellow circle with a big mouth and challenging them to navigate through a series of maze like levels eating up all the dots. Pac-Man is pursued by four ghosts in different colours who chase him through the maze and by eating one of the four larger dots in each corner of the map the player can supercharge Pac-Man and turn the tables to gobble down the ghosts. Periodically fruit appears in the centre of the map which the player can eat for bonus scores. In theory the game has no end and simply speeds up with each passing level until the player runs out of lives.

The game was developed by Toru Iwatani and took around a year and a half to design and develop. He had no experience of developing games when he joined Namco and was actually keen to work on pinball games but the company lacked a pinball division so they put him to work on an arcade title instead. He first produced a video game version based on pinball but when he began work on Pac-Man he aimed to make something which would appeal to all gamers. He wanted to create a game which was different to the popular titles of the day, which were mostly shooters like Space Invaders. The name of the character came from the Japanese slang word for the movement your mouth makes when you eat, paku paku. Toru was given a small team to help realise his vision and thanks to advances in the technology he was able to produce the game in colour.

The initial release in Japan was less than stellar and the game continued to be outsold by Space Invaders but when Midway picked it up for US release the popularity surprised everyone and it went on to be the biggest selling arcade title ever in America. Midway redesigned the cabinet and changed the name from Puck Man to Pac-Man. They sold over 100,000 games in the first year alone.

Pac-Man was also one of the first games to spawn a huge range of merchandising and many clones and sequels followed the original release. Pac-Man himself was soon one of the most recognisable video game characters around and his likeness graced everything from lunchboxes to t-shirts. The game also inspired a cartoon series and even a successful song.

The enduring appeal of Pac-Man is not hard to explain and in the violent world of videogames he stood out as a peaceful alternative with an innocently fun aim. The game-play remains deeply addictive and there are loads of free playable online versions. Namco have even released replica cabinets of the original which you can buy for your home.