7/05/2005
Pellet-Powered Pac-Man Turns 25 With Its Cultural Status Firmly Intact
ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 4, 2005
Despite an obvious lack of choppers, video-game icon Pac-Man is getting long in the tooth. The ghost-wary hero with an insatiable appetite for dots has turned 25.
Certainly, the original master of maze management remains a bright yellow circle on the cultural radar. But there is more to Pac-Man's broad appeal than eating pellets and dodging on-screen archrivals Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde.
The game marks a turning point in the march toward the modern video-game era.
"This was the first time a player took on a persona in the game. Instead of controlling inanimate objects like tanks, paddles and missile bases, players now controlled a 'living' creature," said Leonard Herman, author of "Phoenix: The Rise and Fall of Videogames." "It was something that people could identify, like a hero."
The Pac-Man saga began in Japan, when Toru Iwatani, a young designer at Namco, caught inspiration from a pizza that was missing a slice. Puck-Man, as it was originally called, was born. Because of obvious similarities to a certain four-letter profanity, the game was renamed Pac-Man for its U.S. debut in 1980.
Success spawned a romantic interest, Ms. Pac-Man. The voracious couple went forth and multiplied, producing Junior Pac-Man, a cartoon show and hundreds of licensed products.
The phenomenon even reached the pop music charts when "Pac-Man Fever" by Buckner & Garcia drove listeners crazy in 1982.
While many spent countless quarters in the pursuit, only one person is known to have played a perfect game of Pac-Man, according to video-game record keepers Twin Galaxies: Billy Mitchell racked up a score of 3,333,360 after clearing all 256 levels in more than six hours in 1999.
Pac-facts
It took eight people 15 months to complete the original Pac-Man arcade game. Four worked on the hardware; four worked on the software.
Namco estimates that the original Pac-Man arcade game has been played more than 10 billion times in its 25-year history.
The Guinness Book of Records lists Pac-Man as the "most successful coin-operated game" in history.
Pac-Man featured 256 stages. Near the end, half of the screen becomes garbled so that you can't see where Pac-Man is going. Mitchell says Pac-Man's popularity was in its nonviolent simplicity.
"The fact that it's cute, it's almost like a hero running around the board from bad guys. It's not an appeal based on violence," said Mitchell, 39, from Hollywood, Fla. "Whether it was an 80-year-old lady or a kid, everyone could adapt to the Pac-Man world."
A quarter of a century later, Pac-Man's influence continues.
As part of a final project for a class in New York University's Interactive Telecommunications graduate program last year, students with cell phones and Wi-Fi Internet connections mimicked the game, tracking their movements on a grid spanning several city blocks.
They called this analog re-enactment, where four people dressed as ghosts searched for Pac-Man on the streets around New York's Washington Square Park, Pac-Manhattan.
"We never had anyone clear the entire board," said Frank Lantz, a game designer who taught the course.
Namco, which is not sure of an exact date for Pac-Man's birth, sold 293,822 of the arcade machines between 1980 and 1987. And they show no sign of giving up on the franchise.
The company is releasing several derivative games this year, including Pac-Mania 3D, Pac-Man World 3, Pac-Pix and Pac-Man Pinball. It even began making a special 25th-anniversary edition of the old arcade machine.
"People say, 'Who buys Pac-Man?'" said Scott Rubin, general manager of Namco America. "It's one of the few games where the answer is, 'Everyone.'"
July 4, 2005
Despite an obvious lack of choppers, video-game icon Pac-Man is getting long in the tooth. The ghost-wary hero with an insatiable appetite for dots has turned 25.
Certainly, the original master of maze management remains a bright yellow circle on the cultural radar. But there is more to Pac-Man's broad appeal than eating pellets and dodging on-screen archrivals Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde.
The game marks a turning point in the march toward the modern video-game era.
"This was the first time a player took on a persona in the game. Instead of controlling inanimate objects like tanks, paddles and missile bases, players now controlled a 'living' creature," said Leonard Herman, author of "Phoenix: The Rise and Fall of Videogames." "It was something that people could identify, like a hero."
The Pac-Man saga began in Japan, when Toru Iwatani, a young designer at Namco, caught inspiration from a pizza that was missing a slice. Puck-Man, as it was originally called, was born. Because of obvious similarities to a certain four-letter profanity, the game was renamed Pac-Man for its U.S. debut in 1980.
Success spawned a romantic interest, Ms. Pac-Man. The voracious couple went forth and multiplied, producing Junior Pac-Man, a cartoon show and hundreds of licensed products.
The phenomenon even reached the pop music charts when "Pac-Man Fever" by Buckner & Garcia drove listeners crazy in 1982.
While many spent countless quarters in the pursuit, only one person is known to have played a perfect game of Pac-Man, according to video-game record keepers Twin Galaxies: Billy Mitchell racked up a score of 3,333,360 after clearing all 256 levels in more than six hours in 1999.
Pac-facts
It took eight people 15 months to complete the original Pac-Man arcade game. Four worked on the hardware; four worked on the software.
Namco estimates that the original Pac-Man arcade game has been played more than 10 billion times in its 25-year history.
The Guinness Book of Records lists Pac-Man as the "most successful coin-operated game" in history.
Pac-Man featured 256 stages. Near the end, half of the screen becomes garbled so that you can't see where Pac-Man is going. Mitchell says Pac-Man's popularity was in its nonviolent simplicity.
"The fact that it's cute, it's almost like a hero running around the board from bad guys. It's not an appeal based on violence," said Mitchell, 39, from Hollywood, Fla. "Whether it was an 80-year-old lady or a kid, everyone could adapt to the Pac-Man world."
A quarter of a century later, Pac-Man's influence continues.
As part of a final project for a class in New York University's Interactive Telecommunications graduate program last year, students with cell phones and Wi-Fi Internet connections mimicked the game, tracking their movements on a grid spanning several city blocks.
They called this analog re-enactment, where four people dressed as ghosts searched for Pac-Man on the streets around New York's Washington Square Park, Pac-Manhattan.
"We never had anyone clear the entire board," said Frank Lantz, a game designer who taught the course.
Namco, which is not sure of an exact date for Pac-Man's birth, sold 293,822 of the arcade machines between 1980 and 1987. And they show no sign of giving up on the franchise.
The company is releasing several derivative games this year, including Pac-Mania 3D, Pac-Man World 3, Pac-Pix and Pac-Man Pinball. It even began making a special 25th-anniversary edition of the old arcade machine.
"People say, 'Who buys Pac-Man?'" said Scott Rubin, general manager of Namco America. "It's one of the few games where the answer is, 'Everyone.'"
