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For other meanings, see Pac-Man (disambiguation).
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
Designer(s)Toru Iwatani - Game Designer
Hideyuki Mokajima - Programmer
Toshio Kai - Sound & Music
Platform(s)
Release05/1980
Genre(s)Maze
Mode(s)Up to 2 players, alternating turns

Pac-Man (or Pakkuman) is an arcade game developed by Namco and licensed for distribution by Midway that was first released in 1980. Immensely popular from its first release through today, Pac-Man is universally considered one of the classics of the medium, virtually synonymous with video games, 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 seventeen 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 he eats he eats. When first launched in Japan on May 10, 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, that same year, the game was picked up for manufacture in the U.S. by Bally division Midway, 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.

Unsourced image removed:

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 mass produce, 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.

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.

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 ghosts (Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde) also wander the maze in an attempt to catch Pac-Man. Each level begins with three ghosts in their "monster pen" and one monster above it, and Pac-Man near the bottom of the maze. The ghosts are released from the pen periodically as Pac-Man eats dots.

There are four power-up items near the corners of the maze, known as "energizers" or "power pills" which provide Pac-Man with the temporary ability to eat the ghosts. The ghosts turn a deep blue and reverse direction immediately when Pac-Man eats an energizer, and they move more slowly while they are vulnerable. The ghosts 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 ghosts each time. If a ghost is eaten, his eyes return to the monster pen where he will be restored to normal. The ghosts flash white five times before they revert to being dangerous. The amount of time the ghosts 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 ghosts 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.
  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 position 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.

Initially, these characters were referred to as "monsters", but soon became known as "ghosts." (see Ghosts vs. monsters.)

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 Pac-Man does not lose all of his lives. However, 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 unplayable. This 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 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. Enthusiasts refer to this as the "Final Level," the "Split-Screen Level," or simply as the ending. Although there are claims that someone with enough knowledge of the maze pattern can play through it, it is generally considered unable to be cleared 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 supposed occurrence. Billy Mitchell offered $100,000 to anyone who could provably pass through the Split-Screen Level before January 1, 2000; there is no evidence that anyone could.

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

Through 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 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.

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 outdo that year. 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 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 partially 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 sequels, though none of them were as popular as the original.

Knock-offs

Unauthorized "pirate" versions of the game were also created, most notably Hangly-Man (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. Another popular clone game was Piranha, which replaced Pac-Man with a munching fish. The maze was replaced with a coral reef, and the monsters are squids. (In an earlier variant, they are little more than ghosts with extended sprites for the tentacles). A brief reference to the game was even included in the Pac-Man TV series, when in an underwater scene, a fish is shown eating a ghost-squid.

In addition, soon after the release of the original Pac-Man, many other maze-themed video games entered the arcade market (Make Trax, Thief, Lady Bug and Mouse Trap 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.

Texas Instruments released a clone called Munchman for the TI-99 home computer line in 1982, in which the player lays down a "track" as he progresses through the maze instead of eating pills – a change made by TI to avoid possible lawsuits from Midway.

Pac-Man Arrangement

Main article: 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.

Pac-Man Vs.

Main article: Pac-Man Vs.

In 2003, a new version called Pac-Man Vs. for the Nintendo GameCube allowed four players to play simultaneously via the GameCube-Game Boy Advance cable.

Nomenclature conflicts

There have been various debates over the naming of some of the items in the game.

Ghosts vs. monsters

The longest-running of these debates are of the villains. The four villains of the game have been called both "monsters" and "ghosts." Among the general population, "ghosts" seems to have become more popular. On the original gameplay instructions located next to the screen, however, the successive "200, 400, 800, 1600" scoring is referred to as "Monster point value." In Pac-Mania, the artwork next to the screen also calls them "monsters," and "The Sand Box" level introduction screen warns, "Beware of bouncing monsters." On the cabinet artwork for the earlier American games, the villains were also drawn as furry monsters.

The term "ghosts" originates from the failed Atari 2600 port. Technical limitations caused the villans to flicker, and the game's manual dubbed them "ghosts" so as to cover up the flaw. Although the game was ultimately unsuccessful due to these flaws, the term stuck, and soon spread to all of the bubble gum cards, stickers, and other merchandise released afterwards.

On the Japanese cabinet art and flyers, the villains appeared somewhat like sheeted ghosts. These became the basis for most drawings on the various merchandise. Consequently, cabinet artwork for later arcade games depicted the villans as more ghost-like.

The TV cartoon version compromised between the two conflicting names by calling them "ghost-monsters." Despite the name, however, the villains' characteristic were more ghost-like than monster-like. Their outfits, for instance, were now linen "ghost suits" kept stored in a closet. The villains also appeared to be spirits with eyes under the suits. However, the game intermissions show that they have fleshy bodies.

Power pellets

On the instruction cards, the power items were called "energizers", but on the Atari 2600 port they were called "power pills", and on the cartoon they were called "power pellets" ("pellet" is considered more appropriate, since "pill" might suggest a drug reference). The 240 basic ten-point items on the game are simply called "dots" on the card. Again, the Atari 2600 version changed the dots to "video wafers" (because of their rectangular shape, no doubt). "Pac away" was used as the verb for the act of "eating" them. But there were no such pellets in the cartoon, but rather all were power pellets. (The act of one character eating another was called "chomping" in the cartoon).

Fruits

The fruits were not officially classified in the original instruction cards and were not represented in the cartoon. Players have generally adopted the name of "fruits" to the bonus items that appear in the middle of the board. Pac-Mania officially calls them fruits; when a fruit appears, a notification says, "Fruit target." Jr. Pac-Man calls them "bonus symbols," but that game had toys, instead of fruits. The static square-within-a-square prize in the center of the Atari 2600 board is called a Vitamin by the game's instruction manual.

Who's the Boss?

Another series of inconsistencies in the history of the game is the different personalities and roles of the ghost-monsters. In the original game, and most others afterward, the order of the listed villains in the intro screen shows Blinky as the leader. In the actual gameplay, he is the one who pursues you the most aggressively, especially in the state of Cruise Elroy. He is often followed by Pinky. Then Inky often cuts Pac-Man's escape route off, as was stated. Clyde always seems to be wandering off and doesn't get in the way as much. This pattern was followed consistently, until the cartoon, in which the personalities were changed, with Clyde as the boss, Inky as the dumb one, Sue (a new, purple ghost who later appeared in Pac-Land) as also bossy and Blinky as very timid. (Only Pinky’s personality matched his character as a tough bully.)

The games released after the TV series continued the original roles, until Pac-Land, which was based squarely on the cartoon. While the four male ghosts basically do not differ from each other in their moves (they mostly bob up and down in their vehicles), the eyes now reflected the cartoon, with Clyde as the angry-looking leader, Blinky as timid looking and Inky as stupid-looking, with crossed eyes. Sue was also particularly aggressive, lurking behind you if you moved too slowly through the game. These were the basic drawings of the ghosts used on most merchandise and newer game artwork to the present.

Pac-Mania changed things again. The facial expressions were not used in the game or cabinet artwork. (With the exception of Sue's angry eyes in the game). The screen displaying the list of high-scores, however, shows the cartoon ghosts chasing Pac-Man, with Blinky having the angry "boss" eyes, while Inky still having the goofy crossed eyes. On the other hand, the screen-side art somewhat followed the cartoon, listing "Clyde" as "The Boss. He’s super fast when mad." (Which would presumably refer to the "Cruise Elroy" associated with the true boss, Blinky.) Blinky is listed as "The slow, absent minded one." However, on the actual gameplay, players see pretty much the same pattern from the original game, with Blinky coming fast, Pinky being tough, Inky moderately tough, and Clyde hardly bothering the player at all. The difference is Sue, who is once again very aggressive (and now often gives you more trouble than Blinky), along with the game's new ghosts, Funky and Spunky.

In Pac-Man Arrangement, the personality-swap introduced by the cartoon completely affected the personalities in the game. The different-colored ghosts still act the normal way, but now, on the introductory screen where the ghosts are listed, players see that Blinky and Clyde have swapped names! ("Clyde" is now the red leader, and "Blinky" is the orange one on the bottom).

Ports

Pac-Man is one of the few games to have 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 arcades. 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, which today is equated to about $2.23 million.

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 (seven out of every ten of the ten million user base bought the game), except that Atari produced twelve 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 hardware, which 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 has been likened to a wrench with an eye, and 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, unlike the "waaka waaka" sound of the arcade. The maze has been viewed as very unsimilar to the original arcade game in structure (the escape tunnels are located at the top and bottom of the screen) and in color (this version has orange walls and a blue background). The "fruit" has become a two-color rectangle which does not change from board to board.

It is interesting to note that, despite its perceived inferiority, sound effects from the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man are possibly the sounds most often used as stock sound effects in films and television series to represent the sounds of a game being played in the background of a scene. This continued for years after the crash of 1983, and despite the fact that the game shown in any given TV or movie scene was usually a completely different video game, and sometimes not even being played on an Atari 2600; the sounds have even been used to represent background noise from arcade machines.

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The PBS children's show Square One (TV show) 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 mathematical theme (numbers that are multiples of 4, reduceable fractions, etc.). In order to progress, Mathman would simply move next to one of the problems presented on the board and determine its answer by a count of three. 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 eventually eat 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.

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. Then, there was the aforementioned 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, the "nicknames" given Pac-Man's enemies in the game—Blinky, Pinky, Inky, Clyde; became their official names, and Sue was a new ghost, colored purple. 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). Even though Mezmaron was a new character and not from the game, as the leader of the ghosts, he can be seen as representing the game program. It certainly did "mezmerize" many kids, which is perhaps what led to the name. Marty Ingels was the voice actor of Pac-Man.

Similar 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. In fact, one of the first non-Nintendo characters to appear in a Nintendo 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. Ms. Pac-Man and the red ghost Blinky are also playable.

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 it 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.
  • In Mexico Pac-Man was used in a Seven Up TV spot commercial in 1983
  • A parody of Pac-Man appears in the film Club Dread, turning the premise of the game into a drinking game, turning the ghosts into females that must strip, etc.
  • A racing team in R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 is named after Pac-Man. "Pac Racing Club" is a normal-level team in that game.
  • Pacman is also the nickname of the Filipino boxing champion Manny Pacquiao. The two-time world champion earned the distinction as the only boxer who has knocked down both future Mexican "Hall of Famer" Marco Antonio "Baby Face Assassin" Barrera (knocked out in 11th round)and Erik "El Terrible" Morales (knocked out in 10th round. Pacquiao has been on the top 10 list of the best "pound-for-pound" fighters in the world.

See also

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