![]() Midway had created a hit that was just as good (if not superior) to the original Pac-Man game. Midway would go on to do this several more times for the Pac-Man series-a bad business practice that ultimately ended the relationship between them and Namco.īut Namco shouldn’t have been too upset about this first breach in trust. Without asking for Namco’s permission, Midway then proceeded to sell the unofficial sequel to arcades across the USA. Midway bought the rights to release the game and tweaked it substantially. The game blatantly copied the look and gameplay of Pac-Man. But the most famous example was initially known as Crazy Otto. Namco was in the process of developing the official sequel, Super Pac-Man, but neither the gamers nor Midway, Namco’s North American distributor, had any patience left.Ĭlones upon clones of the Pac-Man gameplay formula have been produced throughout the past thirty-five years-too many to count. Only two years after the Pacster’s debut, gamers were demanding more. New generations of gamers continue to find enjoyment in this 24kb arcade game that got its start all the way back in 1980. Here we are thirty-five years later and still playing (and talking about) Pac-Man. Perfect from the start, Pac-Man’s video game empire was set to last for decades. Pac-Man is definitely an arcade game: the gameplay is the same throughout all the levels, yet each level varies in the game’s difficulty factors, and the game rewards players with points, congratulatory sound effects, and regular intermissions (cutscenes) that divide the game into manageable chunks. Pac-Man is one of the first games to have such well-coded AI that players not only felt that they were being chased by “aware” enemies, but they also had very similar impressions of the ghosts’ personalities based on how the enemy AI acted and reacted to the player.Īnother winning factor is the game’s simple yet addictive gameplay. For those interested in this topic, this link is an excellent site to check out. Actually, there is quite a bit of code behind the ghosts’ movement patterns. Pinky tries to anticipate where Pac-Man is headed and cut him off, and Clyde seemingly moves about randomly. Inky tends to wander around within the vicinity of Pac-Man, especially when Blinky is nearby. Infamously, Blinky hounds after Pac-Man with abandon. So the Namco team ingeniously reprogrammed the ghosts to have “behaviour” in their movements. However, clever players immediately memorized those set paths and dominated the Pac-Man game without much effort. ![]() The “rough draft” version of Pac-Man had ghosts with programmed set paths. It’s neon-like color scheme and “nom-nom-nom” sounds are attractive right from the start, and then they become almost addictive the longer you play. The game became a success for many reasons. Pac-Man’s release perfectly coincided with the Golden Age of video arcades, which began in the late 1970s and ended in the mid to late 1980s. To this day, the original Pac-Man game holds the record for the highest grossing arcade game of all time. Namco went on to manufacture and sell Pac-Man arcade cabinets until 1987, by which time, there had been more than 350,000 units sold. In the first year alone, Namco sold over 100,000 cabinets, coming in both upright and cocktail models. Ironically, even Defender, for which they didn’t have high hopes at all, sold better than Rally-X, but the true shocker was the splash that Pac-Man made in arcades around the world.įirst in Japan, and then in the West (especially in the USA), fans’ Pac-Man fever raised the arcade game to super stardom status. In fact, the company was really pushing for the promotion of Rally-X, which they thought would be the best of the bunch. Surprisingly, Namco did not expect Pac-Man to be that successful. Namco showcased the game at a trade show in 1980 along with Battlezone, Defender, and Rally-X. With a team of just eight people, Mr Iwatani designed and programmed the game in fifteen months. Pac-Man was originally named “Puck-Man,” but that would cause obvious problems for adolescent gamers in the West, so his name was changed from “Puck” to “Pac,” which is derived from the Japanese term “paku-paku” for munching. Pac-Man was the brainchild of Toru Iwatani, who claims to have been inspired to create the character after seeing a pizza with a quarter of it gone. We hope you enjoy the history and incredible facts surrounding this yellow circle with a triangular mouth. Pac-Man’s contribution to the gaming and arcade machines world is unprecedented, so for his 35 th anniversary this year, Home Leisure Direct would like to give a proper tribute to the Pacster. The character of Pac-Man is one of the most well-known video game icons worldwide, perhaps second only to Mario. 240 pellets, 4 power pellets, and 4 ghosts named Blinky, Inky, Pinky, and Clyde-that is classic Pac-Man.
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