Pac-Man

Released 22 May 1980

Video games — the Namco maze game that broke arcade gaming out of the shooting gallery

A maze game designed by Toru Iwatani at Namco and released in Japan in May 1980 as Puck Man, from the Japanese paku-paku, the sound of eating. Midway renamed it for North America, reasoning that a P on the cabinet was an invitation to vandals. Iwatani set out to make a game that women and couples would play rather than another shooting game, and the result became the highest-grossing arcade machine ever made. Four ghosts pursue the player, each with its own behaviour, and the four flashing power pellets briefly reverse the chase.

How to spot them

▸A yellow wedge eating dots through a maze, pursued by four coloured ghosts
▸Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde — red, pink, cyan and orange
▸Power pellets in the corners, and bonus fruit starting with cherries
▸Released as Puck Man in Japan; a famous crash at level 256

Key facts

Released in Japan in May 1980 as Puck Man, and renamed for America to stop the cabinet being defaced (1980)

Midway feared the P would be scratched into another letter

Four ghosts, red, pink, cyan and orange, each programmed to chase differently

Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde; the red one pursues directly, the pink one aims ahead of the player

A hero its designer said came from a pizza with one slice taken out (1980)

Toru Iwatani has also traced the shape to a simplified Japanese character for mouth, kuchi

Level 256, where an eight-bit overflow fills the right half of the maze with garbage

The famous 'kill screen'; the level counter wraps around to zero

'Fever', a 1982 novelty single by Buckner and Garcia that reached the American top ten (1982)

One of several records inspired by arcade games that year

A 1982 follow-up with a bow and a beauty spot, which began life as an unlicensed kit called Crazy Otto (1982)

Made by General Computer Corporation and later bought and licensed by Midway

A perfect score of 3,333,360, first achieved in 1999 (1999)

Every dot, fruit and ghost on all 255 playable levels; Billy Mitchell was credited with the first

Taken into the design collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2012 (2012)

Part of MoMA's acquisition of video games as design objects

Quick-fire facts

•Designed by Toru Iwatani at Namco and released in Japan on 22 May 1980 as Puck Man
•The name comes from paku-paku, a Japanese expression for the sound of eating
•Midway renamed it for the American market to deter vandalism of the cabinet
•The four ghosts are Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde in English; Akabei, Pinky, Aosuke and Guzuta in Japanese
•Iwatani deliberately aimed at a female and couples audience rather than the male arcade shooter market
•It is the highest-grossing arcade video game of all time
•The game has 256 levels; the 256th is unplayable because an eight-bit counter overflows
•Ms. Pac-Man (1982) began as an unauthorised enhancement kit, Crazy Otto, by General Computer Corporation
•The maximum possible score is 3,333,360
•It entered the Museum of Modern Art's design collection in 2012

Drill it — 8 cards

1 / 8new card

Sources

Museum of Modern Art — Pac-Man — Museum of Modern Art collection Consulted for the 2012 acquisition and design background; cited without URL
Steven L. Kent — The Ultimate History of Video Games