The character of Pac-Man is now the mascot and flagship icon 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 titular character's hockey puck–like shape the title was changed for the North American release to mitigate vandalism. 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. The record is held by fans who built it and it includes a colossal 25,000 levels of play.Single-player, multiplayer (alternating turns) If you really want to challenge yourself with the Pac-Man experience, search for “biggest Pac-Man maze”. It is not surprising that Pac-Man lands itself into the Guinness World Record books for “the most successful coin game”. It was a playable Google Doodle and it gobbled up over 5 million hours of people’s work time! Pac-Man was also the symbol for Google’s homepage once. In 1984, Pac-Man introduced the first side scrolling game in the series, which is the game everyone knows today. In 1980, when it was introduced to America it sold over 100,000 units in its first year of game-play, leading to another equally successful game Ms Pac-Man (1981).ġ982 saw the release of the Pac-Man cartoon on television, attracting fans of the games in wide numbers. This effect was inspired by the showering of fireworks in the night sky. When Pac-Man dies, he has a sparkly dissolve. When you control Pac-Man, you not only come across pellets and ghosts, but special fruits and objects which give extra points such as: He also guest stars in the Disney film Wreck It Ralph (2012), as a villain.

He is orange and is the least threatening, as he often wonders off on his accord. ClydeĬlyde, not only breaks the rhyming pattern, but is the last ghost. He likes to take you to roundabout paths to surprise you.

After eating him, he takes you to the shortest route, but immediately follows you. The ghosts are an integral part of the gaming experience, moving at different algorithms to surprise the gamer. The aim of Pac-Man is to survive many levels of puzzles whilst not being eaten by ghosts. He imagined the pellets that Pac-Man would eat would be big cookies. In Japanese the name means “pakupaku”, which translates as to the sound of eating or munching. He took a slice, looked at his food and Pac-Man was born (or Puck-Man as he was originally known in Japan). Still not sure on his game, Iwatami went to lunch. Whatever he made would have neutral colors that symbolized the most popular food of his time.

Originally going to be about fashion and shopping, he settled on food. He imagined they didn’t want to play games about aliens – bet he didn’t bet on the trends that appear now! In 1980, Toru Iwatami wanted to create a game to introduce women into Japan’s arcades.

Who created it? Read on to find out all about the game. The icon features on many objects such as belts, mugs, shirts – even shoes!īut where did the idea for a yellow round man come from? Pac-Man is one of the most popular gaming icons of the twenty-first century and doesn’t show any signs of stopping.

Pac man cartoon