Pac-Man
In early 1979, Toru Iwatani began work on a project that would change the video game industry forever. He was just twenty-four years old when he joined Namco's small development group. The company president Masaya Nakamura had tasked him with creating games using NEC microcomputers. Iwatani felt that existing arcade games were too violent and appealed only to men. He wanted to create something cheerful that women would enjoy playing.
His inspiration came from a simple lunch scene. Iwatani looked at a pizza with one slice missing and decided to base his character on that shape. He also rounded out the Japanese character for mouth, known as kuchi. This design choice made the character cute and colorful, appealing to younger players. The original title Pakkuman derived from the phrase paku paku taberu, which means gobbling something up.
Iwatani assembled a team of nine other employees to help build the game. They included composer Toshio Kai and programmer Shigeo Funaki. The team spent over a year developing the game, making it the longest project for a video game up to that point. They used bright pastel colors to attract players, taking advantage of new RGB color display technology available in their arcade cabinets.
The gameplay centers around an enclosed maze where Pac-Man must eat all dots while avoiding four colored ghosts. These ghosts have unique names and distinct artificial intelligence patterns. Blinky is red and gives direct chase to Pac-Man. Pinky is pink and tries to position herself in front of him. Inky is cyan and uses a complicated strategy to zero in on the player. Clyde is orange and switches between chasing and fleeing depending on distance.
Large flashing energizers sit near the four corners of the maze. When Pac-Man eats one, the ghosts turn blue with a dizzied expression and reverse direction. This allows Pac-Man to eat them for bonus points. After being eaten, ghost eyes return to the center box where they regenerate and resume normal activity. Eating multiple blue ghosts in succession increases their point value.
Levels are indicated by fruit icons at the bottom of the screen. Between levels appear short cutscenes featuring Pac-Man and Blinky in humorous situations. The game increases difficulty as players progress because ghosts become faster and energizer effects decrease in duration. Eventually these effects disappear entirely. An integer overflow causes the 256th level to load improperly, rendering it impossible to complete.
Location testing for Puck Man began on the 22nd of May 1980, in Shibuya, Tokyo. Non-gamers responded well while arcade regulars were not impressed. A private showing occurred in June followed by nationwide release in July. Namco America made changes before international distribution including altering ghost names and changing the title from Puck Man to Pac-Man due to fears of vandalism.
Midway Manufacturing agreed to distribute both Pac-Man and Rally-X in North America on November 22, releasing them in December. Initially manufacturing only 5,000 units for the US market, Midway had limited expectations. Some arcades purchased entire rows of cabinets instead. By 1982, the number of arcade units sold tripled to 400,000 receiving an estimated total between seven billion coins and billions in revenue.
Pac-Man became Japan's highest-grossing arcade game of 1980 according to annual charts. It dethroned Space Invaders which had topped charts for two years running. In North America, Pac-Man was the United States' highest-grossing arcade game of 1981 and second highest of 1982. By 1982, it was estimated to have had thirty million active players across the country.
By 1982, Midway had about ninety-five to one hundred five licensees selling Pac-Man merchandise. Major companies like AT&T produced a Pac-Man telephone. There were more than five hundred Pac-Man related products available including bumper stickers, jewelry, bicycles, breakfast cereals, popsicles, t-shirts, toys and pasta. One $20,000 Ms. Pac-Man choker with fourteen karat gold exemplified the range of luxury items created.
The animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera aired on ABC from 1982 to 1983. It became the highest-rated Saturday morning cartoon show in the US during late 1982. The Buckner & Garcia song Pac-Man Fever went to number nine on Billboard Hot 100 charts receiving Gold certification for over one million records sold by 1982.
In 2012, the Pac-Man character entered the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. This addition formed part of an initial selection of fourteen video games. On the 21st of August 2016, during the Summer Olympics closing ceremony, a segment showed Pac-Man and ghosts racing on a running track as Tokyo prepared to host the 2020 Games.
The original arcade system board contained one Z80A processor running at three point zero seven two megahertz. It held sixteen kilobytes of ROM and three kilobytes of static RAM. Each kilobyte was allocated for video RAM, color RAM and generic program RAM respectively. Two custom chips existed on the board: the two hundred eighty-five sync bus controller and the two hundred eighty-four video RAM addresser.
Video output used analog component video with composite sync. A further eight kilobytes of character ROM handled characters, background tiles and sprites. An additional one kilobit of static RAM held four bits per pixel sprite data for one scanline written during horizontal blanking period preceding each line. Sprite size remained always sixteen by sixteen pixels with one color per pixel designated for transparency.
The monitor installed ninety degrees rotated clockwise started visible scanlines from top right corner ending in bottom right corner. Horizontal blanking period duration measured ninety-six pixel clock ticks enough time to fetch four bytes of sprite data per sixteen clock ticks for six sprites. Although attribute memory exists for them, sprites zero and seven remain unusable due to timing windows occupied by level indicator or rows of characters.
Guinness World Records awarded the Pac-Man series eight records in Gamer's Edition 2008 including Most Successful Coin-Operated Game. On June third, 2010, creator Toru Iwatani officially received certificate recognizing Pac-Man having had most coin-operated arcade machines installed worldwide at two hundred ninety-three thousand eight hundred twenty-two units set and recognized in 2005.
A perfect score on original arcade game equals three million three hundred thirty-three thousand three hundred sixty points achieved when player obtains maximum score on first two hundred fifty-five levels without losing life then uses all six lives to obtain maximum possible number of points on level 256. First person to achieve publicly witnessed verified perfect score without manipulating hardware was Billy Mitchell performing feat on July third, 1999.
In December 1982, eight-year-old boy Jeffrey R. Yee received letter from United States president Ronald Reagan congratulating him on world record score of six million one hundred thirty-one thousand nine hundred forty points possible only if he passed level 256. In April 2011, Soap Creative published World's Biggest Pac-Man working together with Microsoft and Namco-Bandai celebrating Pac-Man's thirtieth anniversary as multiplayer browser-based game.
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Common questions
Who created Pac-Man and when did development begin?
Toru Iwatani began work on the project in early 1979 while he was twenty-four years old. He joined Namco's small development group to create games using NEC microcomputers.
What inspired the design of the Pac-Man character?
Iwatani based the character shape on a pizza with one slice missing and rounded out the Japanese character for mouth known as kuchi. This design choice made the character cute and colorful to appeal to younger players.
When was location testing for Puck Man conducted in Tokyo?
Location testing for Puck Man began on the 22nd of May 1980 in Shibuya, Tokyo. A private showing occurred in June followed by nationwide release in July.
How many arcade units were sold by 1982 and what revenue was generated?
By 1982 the number of arcade units sold tripled to 400,000 receiving an estimated total between seven billion coins and billions in revenue. Midway had about ninety-five to one hundred five licensees selling merchandise during this period.
Which video game entered the Museum of Modern Art collection in 2012?
The Pac-Man character entered the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 2012. This addition formed part of an initial selection of fourteen video games.