Friday Flashback — Pac Man

There are landmark games in our gamer universe, iconic games and then there are games that were so groundbreaking and popular they have their own very special place in our history. These are the games where all you have to do is say the name and it instantly brings up memories, stories and there is an instantaneous connection in some way shape or form even if you never played the game.

Pac-Man is one such game.

A classic among classics, this game couldn’t have been more successful. Besides obliterating all its competition, devouring millions of of quarters from our pockets and even having a hit song written about it, this game is without question, one of the greatest things to ever grace the world of videogames and to this day, still garners acclaim and accolades for it’s simple yet ridiculously entertaining concept. It is arguably the most famous videogame of all time

Unleashed in May of 1980 by Namco this arcade game found instant appeal among gamers because it wasn’t a space shooter (popular at the time) and anyone could play it. All you needed was a quarter, fast reflexes and some free time. There were no explosions, no shooting, no buttons to press at all. The primary control device was a joystick and the concept couldn’t be simpler.

You as a small yellow circle, pac-man, had to eat pac pellets in a maze. Eat all the pellets, move on to the next maze. You would also get random fruit that would appear near the center. You eat those and you get bonus points.  Along the way you had foes in the shape of ghosts (Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde) who provided the challenge of the chase throughout the maps. If they caught you or cornered you, pac man would die.  As a defense you had four power pellets placed in the four corners of the maze that you could eat which allowed you for a short period of time, the ability to eat the ghosts who would turn blue and scurry from you after you ingested the flashing  power pill.  If you could complete all 255 levels you would have the perfect game (achieved by uber gamer Billy Mitchell).

Now read that back and imagine pitching that to a videogame publisher today.

You would get questions like

“Do the ghosts blow up?”

“Can you shoot them with anything?”

“What if we gave the Pac-Man arms and legs?’

“Can we add more realism?

Yet there it was, a simple game that captured the the hearts and cash of millions of people world wide that was spawned out of a a Japanese developer whose original title was pakku-man haberu. That name was apparently inspired by the phrase paku-paku which is the term developer Tōru Iwatani used to describe the noise pac-man made when he ate pellets.

The game originally didn’t do very well in it’s native country but when it launched in the U.S. it was an instant success. From a brand marketing standpoint no other game has ever had this much brand awareness — something in the realm of 90% or more of Americans recognize the name. The arcade cabinets themselves cleared more than 350,000 units and once the home console market started this game was one of the few that was consistently ported and continued to do so for the next 20 years.  To say this game was a cultural phenomenon is an understatement. It simultaneously launched videogames into the mainstream while validating this form of entertainment as viable and financially sound.

Namco was no slouch either. They rode the Pac-Man cash cow  until its legs fell off and there was only a skeleton left to sit on. The made anything and everything including board games, tons of merchandise, cartoons, a remake of the game for Xbox Live in 2006 and of course who could forget Ms. Pac-Man. There was even a proposed film a few years ago. Thankfully we were spared that project’s completion. To date Pac-Man is the only videogame to have eight awards in the Guinness Book of Records: Gamers Edition. No other game so far has matched it’s success, popularity or longevity in the industry.

All this from a yellow circle eating dots. Go figure.

Friday Flashback — Pac Man