UNDERSTANDING THE ORIGINS OF A VIDEO GAME LEGEND: PAC-MAN

#videogames #invention #80s #arcade

Pac-Man is an arcade game developed by Namco released in Japan by 1980, created by Japanese video game designer Toru Iwatani. Pac-Man is considered one of the classics of the video game history of all time and represent part of the 80s culture which became a phenomenon among video game users since that time. Pac-man generated high sales of merchandise and a big bunch of appearances in other media, such as the Pac-Man animated television series.

When the video game was released, the most popular video games were in particular Space Invaders and Asteroids, so Pac-Man succeeded by creating a new genre and is often credited with being a landmark in video game history, and is among the most famous arcade games of all time with the highest-grossing video games of all time, having generated more than $2.5 billion by the 1990s.

Pac-Man’s origins according to the character’s creator, the inspiration was pizza without a slice, which gave him a vision of an animated pizza racing through a maze and eating things, however he said later on that the design of the character also came from simplifying and rounding out the Japanese character for a mouth, kuchi. The character’s name comes from “paku-paku”, a Japanese word for gobbling something up.

Share:

Author: Jesus Padilla

Leave a Reply