Pac-Man is a maze game where the character Pac-Man, a yellow circle with a mouth, has to navigate a maze while eating dots and prizes. A level, or board is finished when all dots are eaten. Four ghost-like monsters also wander the maze in an attempt to eat Pac-Man (Wikipedia, 2004). These monsters have names and nicknames which were, Shadow (Blinky), Speedy (Pinky, Bashful (Inky), and Pokey (Clyde). The game was simple but became a phenomenon in the 1980s.
Pac-Man was first released in arcade form by Midway in 1980. Created by Namco game designer named Tohru Iwatani, after seeing a piece of pizza with one slice missing he designed Pac-Man (or Puck-Man in Japan). There were two main versions: an upright and a cocktail table model. Two variations of the upright were made; the primary difference other than size was that one (the standard aracde model) had art on the sides and below the coin slots, and on the other these areas had a woodgrain pattern (Classic Gaming, 1996).
Pac-Man soon became a huge hit in the arcade and with merchandising, but in 1981, Atari attempted to release it to the home video game market, which was a disastrous failure. Atari's adaptation of the game turned out to be stiff, lifeless, and it somehow managed to remove the colourful, fun aspect of Pac-Man (Wikipedia, 2004). The music was bad, the graphics were horrible, and the levels were beyond repetitive. Little charms like the Pac-Man death melody and the cute cherries were replaced with garish counterparts. In a nutshell, the brilliance that was arcade Pac-Man was lost and never to be found. (Trueman, 1995). Some believe that this is one reason for the video game crash of 1983.
However, Pac-Man continued to be a success in arcades, with the release of many spin-offs including Ms Pac Man, Pac-Man Plus, Mr and Mrs Pac-Man, Baby Pac-Man, Junior Pac-Man, Professor Pac-Man, Pac Land and Pac Mania to name a few (Classic Gaming, 1996).
While, Pac-Man reached its peak of popularity in the 1980s it is still widely recognised today. Versions of the game was released on the Game Boy, Game Gear and MSX and the re-release of the NES in 1993. Versions were also released on the SNES, Genesis and Play-station and even in Windows 95 (Classic Gaming, 1996).
In 2003 a new version of the game for the Nintendo Game Cube was released and in 2004 a New York University's Interactive Telecommunications graduate program created a "real world" version of the game called Pac-Manhattan (Wikipedia, 2004).
Reference List
Classic Gaming (1996) Pac-Man, retreieved 21 October, 2004, from http://www.classicgaming.com/pac-man
Trueman, D. (1995) History of Pac-Man, retrieved 20 October, 2004, from http://www.mameworld.net/pacman/history/p4_01.htm
Wikipedia (2004) Pac-Man, retrieved 22 October, 2004, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac_Man
Kimberley Howard 15:19, 22 Oct 2004 (EST)
Kimberley Howard 18:29, 9 Sep 2004 (EST)
