![]() ![]() Yeah, you definitely couldn’t say something like that today. So I decided to theme the game around “eating” – after eating dinner, women like to have dessert.” “When you think about things women like, you think about fashion, or fortune-telling, or food or dating boyfriends. Not too colorful or character driven. With Pac-Man, the idea was to create cute characters with actual names who could appeal to girls out with their boyfriends in the arcade. Before Pac-Man there was Pong and Asteroids. That’s unusual considering nearly every video game up to that point was a space shooter or a racer or a sports game firmly sitting in the realm of boyishness. Pac-Man’s effect upon the gaming industry is beyond measure, which helps to explain its immediate success and lasting appeal.įirst off, it was the first video game marketed to women. Even people who don’t play video games out of principle know who Pac-Man is, and they probably even played Pac-Man at one point or another in some fit of unchecked passion. I’ve no doubt his image appears in the heads of many who hear the words “retro”, “arcade”, and “80’s”. Put it this way: Pac-Man debuted alongside Namco’s Rally-X, but which of the two ended up being more memorable? How many other games and specifically game characters from 1980 can you recall instantly to mind? The centipede from Centipede, maybe? Donkey Kong, Frogger, and Galaga didn’t even come out until a year later. Pac-Man has an enduring legacy, while so many others from his time have been forgotten. He redefined the arcades.Īlongside Tetris and Super Mario Bros., Pac-Man might be the most iconic and recognizable video game ever. Americans dropping billions of quarters into arcade machines just in 1981 ( Pac-Man’s first full year in North America) was unprecedented, and Pac-Man was at the forefront of that craze since 1980. It attracted more players than anything else had before it. Upon its release, Pac-Man was widely popular. Stick your finger in your ear and wiggle it to make the iconic Pac-Man noise. With paku-paku at his roots, it was easier just to go with Pac-Man for North America and the rest of the world. In Japan, the gluttonous protagonist is called “Pakkuman”, from the Japanese onomatopoeia paku-paku which is the sound of the mouth moving when eating or chewing. ![]() They didn’t want to risk the arcade machines being vandalized by young teens thinking they were being crudely clever. Also, the character almost ended up with the name “Puck-Man” in the US, after his hockey puck resemblance, though they wisely decided against it given the all-American pastime of using strong language. It was distributed in North America by Midway.īut whence cometh the Pac-Man? The story goes that his creators got the idea at a pizza parlor by looking at a pie with a single piece missing, though it’s possible this isn’t at all true. Pac-Man was created by game designer Toru Iwatani ( Pole Position, Libble Rabble) and developed by Nakamura’s company, Namco (short for Nakamura Amusement Machine Manufacturing Company). Video games have never been the same since. He is remembered as a pioneer of the gaming industry and founder of Namco, and in remembering him I thought we’d time travel back to the early days of neon game centers and musky arcades for a look at a true legend: Pac-Man. Masaya Nakamura, known as “the Father of Pac-Man”, has passed on at the age of 91. Heroes get remembered, but legends never die.” “Remember kid, there’s heroes and there’s legends. ![]()
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