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Pac-Man

Developer(s): Namco
Publisher(s): Midway (Namco in Japan)
Designer(s): Iwatani Toru - Game Designer; Hideyuki Mokajima San- Programmer; Toshio Kai - Sound & Music
Release date(s): Japan October 10, 1979; North America October 1980, 1991, 1999, 2005, 2006
Genre(s): Maze
Mode(s): Up to 2 players, alternating turns
Platform(s): Arcade game, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Commodore 64, Game Boy, GBA, Intellivision, Mobile phone, MSX, NEC PC-8801, NGPC, NES, Sega Game Gear, SNES, ZX Spectrum, iPod, Xbox Live Arcade, Wii Virtual Console
Input: 4-way joystick
Arcade cabinet: Standard upright, mini-upright, and cocktail
Arcade system(s): Namco Pac-Man
Arcade CPU(s): 1x ZiLOG Z80 @ 3.072 MHz
Arcade sound system(s): 1x Namco WSG (3-channel mono) @ 3.072 MHz
Arcade display: Vertically oriented, 224 × 288, 16 palette colors

Pac-Man (or Puck Man in Japan; it was renamed in the U.S.A. in order to prevent vandals from changing the "P" into an "F") is an arcade game developed by Namco and licensed for distribution in the USA by Midway, first released in Japan in 1979. Immensely popular from its original release to the present day, Pac-Man is universally considered as one of the classics of the medium, virtually synonymous with video games, and an icon of 1980s popular culture. Upon its release, the game became a social phenomenon that sold a bevy of merchandise and also inspired an animated television series and a Top 40 pop single.

When Pac-Man was released, most arcade video games in North America were primarily space shooters such as Space Invaders and Defender or Asteroids; the most visible minority were sports games (mostly derivative of Pong). Pac-Man succeeded by creating a new genre and appealing to both males and females. Pac-Man is often credited with being a landmark in video game history, and is among the most famous arcade games of all time. The character also appears in over 30 officially licensed games and sequels, as well as in numerous unauthorized clones and bootlegs.

History

The game was developed primarily by Namco employee Toru Iwatani over eighteen months. The original title was pronounced pakku-man and was inspired by the Japanese onomatopoeic phrase paku-paku taberu, where paku-paku describes (the sound of) the mouth movement when widely opened and then closed in succession. Although it is often cited that the character’s shape was inspired by a pizza missing a slice, he admitted in a 1986 interview that it was a half-truth and the character design also came from simplifying and rounding out the Japanese character for mouth, kuchi as well as the basic concept of eating. Iwatani's efforts to appeal to a wider audience — beyond the typical demographics of young boys and teenagers — would eventually lead him to adding elements of a maze. The result was a game he entitled PUCK MAN. When first launched in Japan in 1979 by Namco, the game received a lukewarm response, as Space Invaders and other games of similar type were far more popular at the time.

The following year, however, the game was picked up for manufacture in the U.S. by Bally division Midway, under the altered title Pac-Man (see below). American audiences welcomed a breakaway from conventions set by Space Invaders, which resulted in unprecedented popularity and revenue that rivaled its successful predecessor, as even Iwatani was impressed with U.S. sales. The game soon became a worldwide phenomenon within the video game industry, resulting in numerous sequels and merchandising tie-ins. Pac-Man’s success bred imitation, and an entire genre of maze-chase video games soon emerged, but none equalled the original in profit or popularity.

Competitors and distributors were taken completely by surprise by Pac-Man’s success in North America in 1980. Marketing executives who saw Pac-Man at a trade show prior to release completely overlooked the game (along with the now classic Defender), while they looked to a racing car game called Rally-X as the game to outdo that year. The appeal of Pac-Man was such that the game caught on immediately with the public; it quickly became far more popular than anything seen in the game industry before. Pac-Man outstripped Asteroids as the greatest selling arcade game of the time, and would go on to sell over 350,000 units.

The unique and original game design inspired game publishers to be innovative rather than conservative, and encouraged them to speculate on game designs that broke from existing genres. Pac-Man introduced an element of humor into video games that designers sought to imitate, and appealed to a wider demographic than the teenage boys who flocked to the action-oriented games. Many popular video games of the 1980s, including Q*bert, Donkey Kong, and Frogger partially owe their publication to the success of Pac-Man.

The Killer List of Videogames lists Pac-Man as the #1 video game of all time on its "Top 10 Most Popular Video games" list. Pac-Man, and other video games of the same general type, are often cited as an identifying cultural experience of Generation X, particularly its older members, sometimes called Baby Busters.

Near the corners of the maze are four large round power-up objects known as "energizers" or "power pellets", which provide Pac-Man with the temporary ability to eat the ghosts. The ghosts turn a deep blue and reverse direction immediately when Pac-Man eats an energizer, and they move more slowly while they are vulnerable. The ghosts are worth 200, 400, 800, and 1600 points, in sequence. The values reset back to 200 each time another Power Pellet is eaten, so it is advantageous for the player to eat all four ghosts on each pellet. If a ghost is eaten, its eyes return to the "ghost pen" where it is regenerated in its normal colour. (This may happen while the other ghosts are still blue, if the ghost is near the pen when eaten.) The ghosts flash white up to five times before they become dangerous again. The amount of time the ghosts remain vulnerable varies from one board to the next, but the time period generally becomes shorter as the game progresses. After a certain number of boards,[citation needed] the ghosts no longer turn blue at all, though eating an energizer still causes them to reverse direction.

The 240 regular dots on each level are worth ten points each, and energizers are worth fifty points each. Additionally, prizes commonly referred to as “fruit” (even though several of them are not fruits) appear twice during each board just below the ghost pen — eating a fruit scores extra bonus points. The prizes change throughout the game, and their point values increase (see the table at right).

A widely-circulated[citation needed] false rumour states that far into the game, an extremely rare item would appear, either a bar of gold worth 10 000 points or a screwdriver worth 25 000. In reality, there are no such items.

Pac-Man is awarded a bonus life one time only, at 10 000 points (the default setting; DIP switches inside the machine can change the required points to 15 000 or 20 000 or disable the bonus life altogether).

During Pac-Man gameplay, lives are usually lost by "digging your own grave"; it is easy to situate Pac-Man within the maze so that escape from the ghosts is impossible.

Source: wikipedia.org


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