PAC-MAN, THE MOST POPULAR MAZE IN ARCADE GAMES

Pac-Man

Today, The Grandma has bought a new arcade machine to play at home. If some weeks ago, she bought an Invaders Machine, today she has got a Pac-Man one. The Grandma loves this game and she has invited her closer friend Tonyi Tamaki to play with her new acquisition.

Before receiving Tonyi's visit, The Grandma has continued studying her Ms. Excel course.

Chapter 6. The Functions (VII) (Spanish Version)

Pac-Man is a maze arcade game developed and released by Namco in 1980. Originally known in Japan as Puckman, it would be changed to Pac-Man for international releases as a preventative measure against defacement of the arcade machines. Outside Japan, the game was published by Midway Games, part of their licensing agreement with Namco America.

The player controls the titular character, as he must eat all the dots inside an enclosed maze while avoiding four colored ghosts. Eating large flashing Power Pellets will cause the ghosts to turn blue and reverse direction, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for bonus points. It was the first game to run on the Namco Pac-Man arcade board.

More information: PAC-MAN

The development of the game began in April 1979, directed by Toru Iwatani with a nine-man team. As his second video game for Namco, Iwatani wanted to create a game that could appeal to women as well as men, as most video games during that time period were war games or simple sports titles.

Tonyi Tamaki plays Pac-Man

While several sources claim the inspiration for the game was taken from a pizza with a slice removed, Iwatani has since stated that inspiration was also from rounding out the Japanese symbol kuchi, meaning mouth. The in-game characters were made to be cute and colorful, and to appeal to younger players. The original Japanese title of Puckman was derived from the titular character's hockey puck shape.

Pac-Man was a widespread critical and commercial success, and remains one of the highest-grossing arcade games of its time. 

It is often cited as highly important and influential, and is commonly listed as one of the greatest video games of all time. The success of the game lead to several sequels, merchandise, and two television series, as well as a hit-single by Buckner and Garcia.

The Pac-Man video game franchise remains one of the highest-grossing and best-selling game series of all time, generating over $14 billion in revenue as of 2016 and 43 million in sales combined. The character of Pac-Man is the mascot and flagship icon of Bandai Namco Entertainment and has the highest brand awareness of any video game character in North America.

More information: Today I Found Out

The player navigates Pac-Man through a maze with no dead ends. The maze is filled with dots, known as Pac-Dots, and also includes four roving multi-colored ghosts: Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde. There is also a passageway from the left side of the screen to the right side, four Power Pellets spread out between quadrants, and bonus fruits that appear in each level as points are accumulated.

The objective of the game is to accumulate as many points as possible by collecting dots, fruits, and eating blue ghosts, while normally avoiding the four ghosts.

When all of the dots in a stage are eaten, that stage is completed, and the player will advance to the next one. Between some stages, one of three intermission animations plays. The four ghosts roam the maze and chase Pac-Man. If any of the ghosts touches Pac-Man, a life is lost. When all lives have been lost, the game is over.

Toru Iwatani

Up into the early 1970s, Namco primarily specialized in kiddie rides for Japanese department stores. Masaya Nakamura, the founder of Namco, started to direct the company toward arcade games, starting with electromechanical ones such as F-1 (1976). He later hired a number of software engineers to develop their own video games so as to compete with companies like Atari, Inc.

Pac-Man was one of the first games developed by this new department within Namco. The game was developed primarily by a young 24-year-old employee named Toru Iwatani over a year, beginning in April 1979, employing a nine-man team. 

More information: ThoughtCo

It was based on the concept of eating, and the original Japanese title is Puckman inspired by the Japanese onomatopoeic phrase paku-paku taberu where paku-paku describes the sound of the mouth movement when widely opened and closed in succession.

Although Iwatani has repeatedly stated that the character's shape was inspired by a pizza missing a slice, in a 1986 interview he admitted that this was a half-truth and the character design also came from simplifying and rounding out the Kanji character for mouth, kuchi.

The game of Pac-Man is regarded as one of the most influential video games of all time; its title character was the first original gaming mascot, the game established the maze chase game genre, it demonstrated the potential of characters in video games, it increased the appeal of video games with female audiences, and it was gaming's first broad licensing success.

More information: Mental Floss

Life feels like Pac-Man sometimes, I guess. 

It's the same game all over again. Same board. Same ghosts.

Sometimes, you get a bunch of cherries but eventually and inevitably,

those ghosts catch up with you.
 

Randall