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Pac-Man

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Pac-Man
The Pac-Man arcade game begins with the enemies in the middle of the screen and Pac-Man below. Four power pills are among the dots to be eaten.
Developer(s)Namco
Publisher(s)Midway Games
Designer(s)Toru Iwatani - Game Designer
Hideyuki Mokajima - Programmer
Toshio Kai - Sound & Music
Platform(s)
Release1980
Genre(s)Maze
Mode(s)Up to 2 players, alternating turns

Pac-Man is an arcade game developed by Namco and licensed for distribution by Midway Games in 1980. Immensely popular from its first release through today, Pac-Man is universally considered one of the classics of the medium and an icon of 1980s popular culture.

The game was a stark contrast from many arcade games produced in its day, abandoning "shoot-em-up action" in favor of a unique, humorous, largely non-violent format that appealed to girls as well as boys — a contributing factor to its eventual critical and commercial success.

History and reaction

The game was developed primarily by Namco employee Toru Iwatani. After receiving inspiration from a pizza with one slice missing [1], game designer Iwatani spent approximately one year and five months on a game that revolved around eating. Iwatani's efforts to appeal to a wider audience — beyond the typical demographics of young boys and teenagers — would eventually lead him to adding in elements of a maze. The result was a game he entitled PUCK MAN, derived from the onomatopoeic Japanese phrase pakupaku, meaning to flap one's mouth open and closed and open and closed. When first launched in Japan on April 3, 1980 by Namco, the game received a lukewarm response, as Space Invaders and other games of similar ilk were far more popular at the time.

However, in 1980, the game was picked up for manufacture in the U.S. by Bally division Midway Games, under the altered title Pac-Man. American audiences welcomed a breakaway from conventions set by Space Invaders, which resulted in unprecedented popularity and revenue that rivaled its successful predecessor. The game soon became a worldwide phenomenon within the video game industry, resulting in numerous sequels and merchandising tie-ins. Its style of gameplay became widely imitated by games created by competitors, but none could equal the original in profit or popularity.

File:Pacman-puckman.jpg
A comparison of the American Pac-Man and the Japanese PUCK MAN arcade cabinets shows significant differences.

The name change from PUCK MAN to Pac-Man was said to be partially motivated out of a desire to avoid vandalism that Americans could inflict upon game cabinets by scratching out part of the first letter to change it to an "F". However, because this is not an issue in many non-English speaking countries, both PUCK MAN and Pac-Man machines can be found throughout Europe.

When Midway released Pac-Man in the United States, the company also redesigned the cabinet's artwork, as the Namco-style artwork was more costly to reproduce in large numbers, as well as being considered too stylish for the American market. PUCK MAN was painted overall white featuring multicoloured artwork on both sides with cheerful Puck-Man characters in different poses while Pac-Man was painted yellow, with very simple and easy-to-stencil artwork on both sides and front.

Gameplay

Pac-Man is a maze game. The player maneuvers Pac-Man, a yellow circle with a mouth, to navigate a maze while eating pills and prizes. A level, or board, is finished when all pills are eaten. Four monsters also wander the maze in an attempt to catch Pac-Man. Each level begins with three monsters in their "monster pen" and one monster above it, and Pac-Man near the bottom of the maze. The monsters are released from the pen periodically as Pac-Man eats dots.

There are four special pills near the corners of the maze, known as "energizers" or "power pills", although power "pellet" (as they are first called in the TV series) is more appropriate, since "pill" might suggest a drug reference (however, "energizer" also works). Regardless of the name, these items provide Pac-Man with the temporary ability to eat the monsters. The monsters turn a deep blue and reverse direction immediately when Pac-Man eats an energizer, and they move more slowly while they are vulnerable. The monsters are worth 200, 400, 800, and 1600 points, in sequence (the values starting over again at 200 each time another Power Pill is eaten), so it is advantageous to the player to try to eat all four monsters each time. If a monster is eaten, his eyes return to the monster pen where he will be restored to normal. The monsters flash white five times before they revert to being dangerous. The amount of time the monsters remain vulnerable after a Power Pill is eaten varies from one board to the next, but the time period generally becomes shorter as the game progresses, and after many boards have been completed the monsters will actually not turn blue at all when the energizers are eaten (but they will still reverse direction).

Regular "dots" are worth ten points each (there are 240 of them on each board), and Power Pills (known as "power food" in Japan) are worth fifty points each. Additionally, points can be earned by having Pac-Man eat a bonus prize (generically referred to as a "fruit," even though a few are not actually fruit) that appears twice during each board just below the monster pen. The symbols change with each successive one or two boards, and their point value steadily increases:

  • Cherries, 100 points
  • Strawberry, 300 points
  • Orange, 500 points
  • Apple, 700 points
  • Grapes, 1000 points
  • Flagship from Galaxian, 2000 points
  • Bell, 3000 points
  • Key, 5000 points

Pac-Man is awarded a bonus life at 10,000 points (the default setting; DIP switches inside the machine can change the required points to 15,000 or 20,000 or disable the bonus life altogether).

Ghosts

While the ghosts are bound by the same limitations of the maze, some key differences exist between Pac-Man's and the ghosts' movement. For example, Pac-Man turns corners faster than his adversaries; he can also pass through the "tunnel" on either side of the maze unhindered, as opposed to the ghosts, who suffer a severe drop in speed.

The ghosts have names and nicknames. This list reflects the game's English language version:

  1. Blinky ("Shadow") is the red ghost. When pursuing Pac-Man, Blinky will target Pac-man's current position, then choose a path that minimizes the distance (in pixels) to it. When a certain number of dots are eaten on the board (depending on the level), Blinky will receive a considerable boost in speed. Pac-Man fans refer to this change as "Cruise Elroy." The origin of this term is from the TV show The Jetsons.
  2. Pinky ("Speedy") is the pink ghost. Pinky usually joins Blinky in close pursuit of Pac-Man, but instead targets the spot four dots ahead of the direction where Pac-Man is pointing. Despite his name, Pinky is male.
  3. Inky ("Bashful") is the light blue ghost. Inky's behavior seems quite erratic, but in fact, Inky really does have a strategy: First, Inky will offset Pac-Man's current postion by two dots ahead of the direction of where Pac-Man is currently pointing. Next, Inky will then try to "box-in" Pac-Man by moving to the spot that would put Pac-Man's offset position exactly between it and Blinky's current position.
  4. Clyde ("Pokey"), the orange ghost, will pursue Pac-Man exactly like Blinky until he gets within a radius of 8 dots of Pac-Man. If too close, he will retreat back to his corner of the screen. However, this makes him more difficult for the player to track, putting the player in danger of accidentally running into him. Furthermore, when Pac-Man eats a power pill and tries to eat all four monsters for maximum points, Clyde is sometimes hard to reach before the pill wears off.

In the original Puck-Man, these ghosts were named Oikake ("chaser") (Akabei; "red-guy"), Machibuse ("ambusher") (Pinky), Kimagure ("fickle") (Aosuke; "blue-guy"), and Otoboke ("stupid") (Guzuta; "slow-guy"). Puck-Man also had a DIP switch for alternate monster names: Urchin ("Macky"), Romp ("Micky"), Stylist ("Mucky"), and Crybaby ("Mocky"). The ghosts are introduced by name during the game's attract mode.

There are a few notable quirks in the behavior of the ghosts:

  • If the player survives long enough in a level without being caught by a ghost, the ghosts will all suddenly reverse directions and each will head for a different corner. This will continue to happen as long as the player stays alive without having finished the level, cycling between converging on the player, and de-converging into their respective corners (Blinky: upper right, Pinky: upper left, Inky: lower right, Clyde: lower left).
  • The ghosts will never go upwards into either of the two passages immediately above their monster pen (unless they are in their blue vulnerable state). A player being closely pursued can lose his pursuers by leading them to the top of the monster pen then going upwards into either of the two passages; the ghosts will not follow.
  • Pac-Man may go upwards into (and stop in) the corner immediately to the right and above his starting location facing upwards. When the ghosts are not closely pursuing him, they will never find him, and instead will roam aimlessly around the board until Pac-Man leaves that spot. This trick is used by marathon Pac-Man players to allow themselves an occasional bathroom break.

The movements of the ghosts are strictly deterministic—there is no random or even pseudo-randomness in the algorithms choosing their paths. Experienced players have exploited this flaw by devising precise sequences of movements for each level in order to play indefinitely (termed "patterns"). A later revision of the programming altered the behavior, but it still wasn't random, and new patterns were devised for it.

File:Puckman-flyer.jpg
The Japanese sales flyer from 1980.

Intermissions

During the opening boards of the game, the linearity of the game's progression is interrupted by "intermissions"—humorous animated scenes featuring Pac-Man and the monsters. There are three different intermissions:

  1. Blinky chases Pac-Man off the screen. Blinky reappears as a vulnerable blue monster coming the opposite direction, being chased by a giant Pac-Man. This intermission plays after Board 2.
  2. Blinky chases Pac-Man across the screen, but his pelt gets caught on a tack in the floor, and part of it is ripped off revealing his bare leg. This intermission plays after Board 5.
  3. Blinky, with the corner of his pelt sewn back on, chases Pac-Man across the screen. Blinky reappears coming back the opposite direction, naked, dragging his pelt behind him. This intermission plays after Boards 9, 13 and 17.

"Split-screen level"

The game technically has no end; the player will be given new boards to clear as long as he does not run out of lives. But due to a glitch in the game, the right side of the 256th board is a garbled mess of text and symbols, rendering the level virtually unplayable. This glitch occurs because of a bug in the subroutine that draws the fruit at the bottom of the screen that indicate the current level. Normally, at most 7 fruits are displayed, regardless of the current screen, but since the level number is stored in a single hexadecimal byte, level 255 ("FF" in hexadecimal) rolls over to 0 in the subroutine, and 256 fruit are drawn, corrupting the bottom of the screen and the entire right half of the maze.

Pac-Man enthusiasts refer to this as the "Final Level," the "Split-Screen Level," or simply as the ending of Pac-Man. Although there are claims that someone with enough knowledge of the maze pattern can play through it, it is generally considered unbeatable via legitimate means.

However, in December 1982, an eight-year-old boy named Jeffrey R. Yee received a letter from U.S. President Ronald Reagan congratulating him on a worldwide record of 6,131,940 points, a score only possible if the player has passed the Split-Screen Level. Whether or not this event happened as described has remained in heated debate amongst video game circles since its occurrence. Billy Mitchell offered $100,000 to anyone who could provably pass through the Split-Screen Level before January 1, 2000; no one could.

File:Split Screen in Pac Man.gif
Level 256 in Pac-Man

Through modern tinkering, the details of the Split-Screen Level have been revealed. As playable through arcade game emulator MAME, some ROMs of the game are equipped with a "rack test" within the DIP switches, which will automatically clear a level of all pellets as soon as it begins. This method not only makes reaching the long-mythical 256th board infinitely easier (thus making detailed analysis possible), but also demonstrates what happens after the board has been cleared.

To win: because the right side of the map does not exist, Pac-Man and the ghosts can move freely throughout the right side of the screen, barring some of the garbled symbols which are fractured pieces of the maze. Other symbols also entail power pills, which must be eaten for the player to continue (unlike the unglitched boards, if Pac-Man loses a life, the pills on the right side of the screen will reset after being eaten). Because the maze fracture blockades are "placed" in many locations, it is difficult—if not impossible—to locate them all.

If the board is cleared, the game restarts from the first board without error, once again repeating through 256. However, while the power-ups and intermissions repeat from the opening of the game, the monsters will retain their speed and invulnerability to power pellets from the later boards.

Notable events

The first known "perfect Pac-Man game", in which the player must complete all of the 255 levels, a maximum point score without ever being caught, was played in 1999 by Billy Mitchell. The maximum score is 3,333,360 points.

Legacy

Marketers from the video game manufacturers were taken completely by surprise by the phenomenal success of Pac-Man in 1980. Interviews with programmers who worked in the industry during the initial golden age of video games revealed that marketing executives completely overlooked the game (and likewise dismissed the classic Defender as "too complex"), while they looked to a racing car game called Rally-X as the game to beat that year. But the appeal of Pac-Man caught on immediately with the gaming public, and the game's popularity outpaced anything seen in the industry before; it even surpassed Space Invaders as the most popular and most influential game of the 1980s. The game was so popular that it was one of the most widely bootlegged games in the early 80's; these bootlegged versions often had significant differences in how the monsters ran their patterns.

The unique and original game design inspired game manufacturers to look into game designs that differed from endless "alien invader battle" games. Pac-Man introduced an element of humor into video games that designers sought to imitate, as it appealed to a wider demographic than the teenage boys who flocked to the action-oriented games. Many popular video games of the 1980s, including Q*Bert, Donkey Kong, and Frogger owe their existence to the success of Pac-Man.

The Killer List of Videogames lists Pac-Man as the #1 video game of all time on its "Top 100 Videogames" list. Pac-Man, and other video games of the same general type, are often cited as an identifying cultural experience of Generation X, particularly its older members, sometimes called Baby Busters.

Successors

Pac-Man spawned numerous spin-off and games. Its 'official' arcade lineage includes Ms. Pac Man, Ms. Pac-Man Plus, Pac-Man Plus, Super Pac-Man, Jr. Pac Man, Pac-Land, Pac-Mania, the Baby Pac-Man video/pinball game, and the Professor Pac-Man quiz game. It should be noted, however, only Super, Pac-Land, and Pac-Mania were created by Namco; the others were unauthorized versions by Midway. It was these unauthorized sequels that ultimately led to the termination of the licensing agreement between Namco and Midway, although Namco did release Ms. Pac-Man in Japan (meanwhile Pac-Mania was released in the U.S. by Atari Games).

Other games include the little known Pac and Pal, which Namco did create (with the alternate name of "Pac-Man and Chomp-Chomp"), and "Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man", a traditional pinball game created by Midway, also without Namco's consent. Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures (known as "Hello! Pac-Man" in Japan) was later released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and Sega Genesis in 1994; while the game itself deals with convincing Pac-Man to progress through various scenarios, hidden within is a direct port of the original game.

Knock-offs

Unauthorized "pirate" versions of the game were also created, most notably Hangly-Man (Note: This is an example of Engrish. The consonant "l" should be an "r" and the vowel "a" should be a "u". Thus, it should read "Hungry-Man"), one variant of which replaced the Pac-Man character with the head of Popeye. In addition, soon after the release of the original Pac-Man, many other maze-themed video games entered the arcade market (Make Trax and Thief being the most prominent). In the home video game market, K.C. Munchkin, was actually withdrawn after Atari successfully sued its creator, since its imitation of the Pac-Man characters was so blatant and undisguised. A handheld version called Epoch Man was released by Epoch in 1981 – it can be seen in National Lampoon's Vacation (1983) in Russ's hand. A nice version of Pac-Man can be played at http://www.neave.com/games/pacman/

Pac-Man Arrangement

In 1996, Pac-Man rereleased in the arcades and packaged along with an updated version titled Pac-Man Arrangement. Out of the three released Arrangement editions, Galaga and Dig Dug, Pac-Man is the most bizarre, straying very much away from the original game and completely revamping the feel and pacing.

The biggest change is the addition of a new ghost named "Kinky", who wears sunglasses and is edible at all times. If Pac-Man eats him, he acts as an energizer, making the other ghosts edible. If Pac-Man doesn't catch him, he will eventually "merge" with one or more of the other ghosts which makes them taller and fatter and gives them super powers:

  • Blinky takes on the appearance of a Viking with boxing gloves, and can zip across the screen towards Pac-Man when he is in the same aisle.
  • Pinky takes on the look of a rabbit, and can hop from one side of the board to the other.
  • Inky spins off a transparent copy of himself that is always on the opposite side of the board, and can catch Pac-Man. However, it disappears when an energizer is eaten.
  • Clyde spits out new larger 50 point pills.

In later levels, there are "zippers" that allow Pac-Man to rapidly move from one end to the other end of the board. When on the zipper, hitting ghosts will make them dizzy and temporarily motionless; hitting them while Pac-Man is more powerful (has a power pill) will eat them up. Also, there are additional powerup items that look like firecrackers.

  • The red one gives Pac-Man a slight increase in speed.
  • The pink one causes all the ghosts to be thrown into a huge sack located in their house momentarily.
  • The blue one gives Pac-Man the same power Inky takes on, with a transparent Pac-Man on the opposite side of the board that eats pills and ghosts, but cannot be caught.
  • The orange one only seems to be worth extra points.

Other changes include:

  • Complete graphical and sound effect makeover.
  • When Pac-Man dies, the game continues on without stopping. (Which gives Kinky a chance to give another ghost a power).
  • Game has a more 3D look to it (similar to Pac-Mania).
  • There are larger 20 point and 50 point dots, including certain levels in which the dots "flutter" to different sizes in waves.
  • In other levels, the pills dance around.
  • Pac-Man moves much faster than before.

The game has a final level where the ghosts chase Pac-Man in a huge robot ghost. As Pac-Man eats the pills, they are shot at the robot eventually destroying it.

This game was packaged along with Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, and nine other games in the 128-bit Namco Museum version. It was also released with three other games in Pac-Man Collection.

Pac-Man Vs.

In 2003, a new version called Pac-Man Vs. for the Nintendo GameCube allowed four players to play simultaneously. One player used the Game Boy Advance to view the entire Pac-Man maze and control Pac-Man, while three other players used the TV screen and traditional GameCube controllers to control one monster each. The players that controlled the monsters were only allowed to see the small part of the maze that was around them, limiting the view of the monster players. This showcased Nintendo's connectivity feature between the GameCube and the Game Boy Advance, and was given away free with the Player's Choice rereleased version of Pac-Man World 2 as well as Namco's I-Ninja and R: Racing Revolution games for GameCube.

Ports

Pac-Man is one of the few games to been consistently re-released for over two decades. In the 1980s, it was released for the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Intellivision and Commodore 64, and the Nintendo Entertainment System (1987 and 1990). In the handheld world, it was released on the Game Boy (1991), Sega Game Gear (1991), Pac-Man Special Edition for the Game Boy Color (1999), and Pac-Man Collection for the Game Boy Advance (2001). However, it has been most widely distributed in Namco's long-running Namco Museum series, starting on the PlayStation in 1996 and continuing to this day on every major console (as well as the PSP and Game Boy Advance) with the 50th Anniversary Collection (2005).

Namco has repeatedly rereleased this game in arcades. In 2001, Namco released a 20-Year Reunion game that combined Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga in one cabinet. Also, the game is so popular to this day that it can be found in many arcades, especially those owned by Namco. It is also a popular game found in the "free section" of nickel aracdes. However, it should be noted that Ms. Pac-Man is much more popular and seen more often in arcades than Pac-Man.

Only Space Invaders has managed this feat. However, aside from a Game Boy conversion in 1990 and a SNES conversion in 1994, the game saw few re-releases between 1982 and the game's 25th Anniversary in 2005.

Failed Atari port

File:PacManCrt260007052004.jpg
The Atari 2600 port of Pac-Man was a commercial disaster.

The first attempt to adapt Pac-Man to the home video game market was a disastrous failure. Atari Inc. bought the home video rights to the game, and it promoted the release of the Atari 2600 version of the game with an enormous marketing campaign. In the eyes of the public, the combination of the world's most popular home video game console with the world's most popular arcade game seemed like a "can't miss" blockbuster. However, the actual Atari 2600 adaptation of the game ended up being panned by critics as stiff and lifeless, somehow managing to remove the colorful, "fun" aspect of Pac-Man from the game. It was one of two major home video game releases (along with the Atari 2600 version of E.T.) that may have triggered the video game crash of 1983.

Reports have it that the miserable port of the game to the 2600 was largely due to an overzealous Atari marketing department. As Atari planned for the development of Pac-Man for the 2600, some marketing executives approached one of their principal game programmers, Tod Frye, about doing a version of the game. He said he already had a prototype developed and showed it to them. It lacked polish, but the executives were so eager to start selling the game (due in part to the approaching 1981 Christmas season) that they overlooked its flaws and ordered production of the game based on the unfinished prototype. Atari allegedly paid Frye $1 million for his work.

Unfortunately, the public did not overlook the game's blemishes, and many consumers instead purchased similar offerings from competing video game publishers. The sales figures would normally have been respectable (70% of Atari's 10 million-strong user base bought the game), except that Atari produced 12 million cartridges, which led to a large loss for the company.

File:A2600 Pac-Man.png
A screenshot of the Atari 2600 version. Only one ghost is visible in this image because only one is drawn on the screen at a time.

The game suffers from poor design choices as well as limitations of the 2600. It technically only draws one enemy on the screen at a time, so that each of the game's four enemies only appears in one of every four frames; due to persistence of vision this presents the illusion of having four enemies on the screen at once, but they flicker badly. For this reason, the game's instruction manual calls the enemies "ghosts" instead of "monsters". The ghosts are very subtly tinted different colors, but this can be very hard to see on most television sets, and otherwise there are no differences between the ghosts. Unlike the arcade game in which the monsters' eyes indicate their direction of movement, the eyes of this version's ghosts spin constantly. The ghosts move according to much simpler patterns which do not appear to depend on the location of Pac-Man. Pac-Man himself looks more like a wrench with an eye, his mouth continues to open and close even when he is not moving, and he moves up and down corridors sideways. The dots are actually dashes, and the sound of eating them is a harsh tone. The maze is nothing like that of the arcade game, and this version has orange walls and a blue background. The escape tunnels are located at the top and bottom of the screen. The "fruit" has become a two-color rectangle which does not change from board to board.

The PBS children's show Square One often features a segment called Math Man, a videogame based loosely on Pac-Man. There is only one monster on the Math Man board, a tornado-like creature named "Mr. Glitch," who ordinarily left Math-Man alone. Each board had a certain theme which Math-Man had to abide by (numbers that are multiples of 4, reduceable fractions, etc.) in order to progress, and he would periodically come upon number sets which Mr. Glitch would challenge him at. A correct answer/consumption was accompanied by a fanfare similar to that played on many home computers. However, eating an equation which didn't match the theme (a common occurrence used to end the segment) caused Mr. Glitch to endlessly chase Math-Man and invariably defeat him.

In the popular video game oriented web cartoon Penny Arcade, Gabe is almost always seen wearing a yellow shirt with a black outline of Pac-Man. Other strips reveal that his room is decorated with Pac-Man sheets and matching curtains, and his car's license plate reads "PCMNFN" (Pac-Man Fan). Mike Krahulik, the Penny Arcade artist who uses Gabe as an alter-ego actually has a tattoo of Pac-Man eating pellets around his arm.

In 2004, New York University's Interactive Telecommunications graduate program created a "real world" version of the game called "Pac-Manhattan" where one player runs around the streets of New York City dressed as Pac-Man and collects "virtual dots" (there are no physical representations of the dots in the streets, but a map on a central computer knows where Pac-Man has been and, therefore, which streets have been "cleared"). Four other players play the part of the monsters. Pac-Man (or the monsters when Pac-Man has eaten a power pill by touching a streetsign at certain intersections) are killed by tagging (touching with the hands). Each player has a controller counterpart in constant cell phone contact and are monitored from a centralized location using Wi-Fi internet connections, and custom software designed by the Pac-Manhattan team.

When asked about wearing a Pac-Man T-shirt throughout a Slayer-tour, bassist/singer Tom Araya was quoted saying that he wore the shirt because he considers Pac-Man the most violent game ever, since there's no other game where you have to eat your enemies.

The 2004 movie "Club Dread" features a live version of Pac-Man played on "Coconut Pete's" tropical island, in which four bikini clad girls would chase one man through a hedge maze; drinking from a cup of alcohol was the equivalant of a Power Pellet. The full rules of the game were unknown, as it was called off for murder, particularly those dressed in costumes resembling the various fruit pieces of the game.

In reality, a group of New York City residents play a live-action game of Pac-Man entitled "Pac-Manhattan," (mostly near New York University and Washington Square Park) which utilizes GPS technology and other such instruments in its gameplay. Pictures and other information can be found at http://www.pacmanhattan.com/

A great deal of Pac-Man merchandise was marketed in the 1980s, from t-shirts to toys to hand-held video game imitations to even a pasta. A Saturday morning TV cartoon also called Pac-Man based on the game was produced by Hanna-Barbera and lasted two years from 1982 to 1984. It was also the basis for a Pac-Man Christmas special titled Christmas Comes to Pac-Land. In the series and the special, Pac-Man's enemies were called "ghost-monsters" (a compromise between the two conflicting designations). Their pelts were now linen "suits" kept stored in a closet, and otherwise became more like ghosts than monsters. The "nicknames" given in the game—Blinky, Pinky, Inky, Clyde, became their official names, and Sue (who replaced Clyde in the Ms. Pac-Man game), became a separate, female ghost, colored purple. The personalities were changed a bit, with Clyde as the leader, Inky as the slow, dumb one, Sue as bossy and Blinky as very timid. They were led by the evil Mezmaron, who employed them in his plots to raid the Power Pellet Forest (as called by Mezmaron in the show's opening; it is known as simply the "Power Forest" in the actual episodes). Marty Ingels was the voice actor of Pac-Man.

Similiar to Namco x Capcom, Pac-Man appears as a statue in Tales of Symphonia, another one of Namco's games.

Mario Kart GP

File:Mkagp2.jpg
Pac-Man is one of the first non-Mario characters to be playable in a Mario Kart game.

Pac-Man is a playable character in the Mario Kart Arcade GP game. Klonoa, a Namco character, always wears a blue cap with a little Pac-Man on it. Curiously, this mark was erased in Namco x Capcom, in which Pac-Man's only appearance is as a statue in a single stage. Some fans might use Pac-Man's playable appearance in Mario Kart Arcade GP as an explanation for his total absence in Namco x Capcom, seeing as he crossed over with Mario instead.

Songs

There have been a number of songs inspired by the game:

Trivia

File:Mad pacman cover large.jpg
MAD Magazine named Pac-Man "Man of the Year" in September 1982. This cover spoofs Time Magazine's annual "Man of the Year" issues. So great was Pac-Man's appeal in 1982 that is one of very few MAD covers that do not feature their mascot, Alfred E. Neuman.
  • In Brazil, the game was unofficially named by the children as Come-Come (lit. he eats-he eats, in Portuguese). Also an onomatopoeic, from the sound the character does when walking/eating. In Italy, the same sound is referred as a meaningless Gabo Gabo. In Spain it was called Comecocos (ghost-eater).
  • The secret level of the third episode of Wolfenstein 3D is fashioned after one of the original Pac-Man levels.
  • It was rumored that Toru Iwatani had quit Namco because he only received a small amount of money after creating the game. In reality, he was promoted and as of 2004 is still a Namco employee.
  • The Ms. Pac-Man cartridge for the Atari 2600 was widely considered to be vastly superior to the original 2600 Pac-Man. Over the years, Atari hobbyists have reverse-engineered the Ms. Pac-Man cartridge's graphics and colors to make the game resemble the original Pac-Man more closely. While this is technically a copyright violation (see MAME), the altered ROM has been a popular item among collectors of original 2600 games.
  • In Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune, Pacman and the ghosts (Inky, Pinky, Blinky and Clyde) are actually the fastest enemies encountered.
  • For many years, Pac-Man was the video game mascot for Namco.
  • A plugin kit called Super ABC became available in the 1990s which added several new games to the Pac-Man system, including different versions of the original Pac-Man.
  • Pac-Man was also one of the bonus characters available to play as or against in Anna Kournikova's Smash Court Tennis, for the Playstation, alongside fellow Namco characters including Richard Miller (from Time Crisis), Reiko Nagase, and Yoshimitsu and Heihachi Mishima in their Tekken 3 incarnations.
  • Pac-Man was one of many classic arcade game characters edited into a 2005 series of commercials for the then-new Gametap website.

See also

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