American Pac-Man cabinet.
This article is about the game Pac-Man. For information on the character, see Pac-Man (character).
Pac-Man is an arcade game released in 1980. It was developed by Namco and licensed in America by Midway. It was first released in Japan under the name Puck-Man. It became a huge success there. Midway decided to license the game for release in the U.S. They changed the name to Pac-Man because someone could change the letter "P" in Puck. It became a huge success in America and sold many units. The game became so popular that it sold merchandise, animated TV shows, and also music. The character of the game later became Namco's mascot.
Genre
Pac-Man is the first game to start the maze genre. Most arcade games were shooter games like Galaga or Space Invaders. Pac-Man introduced a new popular genre that inspired newer games.
Gameplay
Pac-Man eating the pac dots in the original game.
The gameplay consists of controlling Pac-Man to eat the pac dots and avoiding the ghosts. Eating the flashing Power Pellets will cause the ghosts to turn blue and Pac-Man can eat them for points and they can regenerate. Different fruits appear and can be eaten for extra points. Eating all the dots in the maze will take you to the next level The four ghosts try and kill Pac-Man using different strategies.
Ghosts
The four ghosts are the enemies in the mazes. They try different maneuvers to harm Pac-Man. Usually they do anything. If Pac-Man touches one he dies.
"Blinky"- The red ghost.
"Pinky"- The pink ghost.
"Inky"- The blue ghost.
"Clyde"-The orange ghost.
Pac-Man Atari 2600 version
Due to the popularity of Pac-Man it was released on many home consoles. Atari released a version on their Atari 2600. The game looked nothing like the original arcade game and the ghosts flashed. The "waka" sound was replaced with a different irritating noise. But the 2600 version managed to sell over 6 million units and was the best selling video game on the console.
Scrambled Level
The 256th level.
The Pac-Man game is an endless game. However if a player were to reach the 256th level the right side of the maze would be covered in letters, digits, and fruits. A man named Billy Mitchell achieved the highest score by reaching the 255th level and getting every bonus. Billy Mitchell later offered a $100,000 reward to anyone who could beat the split screen level but no one did.
Development
Toru Iwatani, an employee of Namco, had created the game. According to an interview, Iwatani had come up with the idea of the character by looking at a pizza with one slice taken away. He originally called the game "Puck-Man". When Midway released the game they changed the name to Pac-Man because the letter "P" could be changed to an "F." The game hit national success worldwide becoming the best selling arcade game of its time. It even sold more units than Asteroids.
Ms. Pac-Man
A video game hack of Pac-Man was made in the early 80s. It was originallly called Crazy Otto created by Midway.
Midway later released Ms Pac-Man which was an unauthorized sequel. It starred Ms. Pac-Man, Pac-Man's girlfriend going through mazes. The gameplay is similar to the original by eating the dots to get to the next level. Different changes were there three different colors of mazes and the fruits moved across the stage. It became so popular that Namco decided to make it an official sequel.