PacMan or also known as Puck Man in Japan is one of the most popular arcade games. Almost every one of us has played this game in our childhood. We all have our nostalgic feelings about this arcade game. PacMan 30th anniversary has been one of the most popular anniversaries of all. Many people remember the PacMan and Google Doodle collab that happened on the PacMan 30th anniversary.
History of PacMan
PacMan was originally known as Puck Man in Japan. In 1979 the game development started under the direction of Toru Iwatani. The main concern at that time was to make this game appealing to both men and women.
Toru Iwatani is the father of PacMan. But the game is owned by Namco. The game was released by Namco for arcades in 1980. An arcade game is a coin-operated machine. It is installed in public businesses for entertainment.
PacMan was a maze action video game. It was a huge success. It gained popularity very quickly. PacMan later became a video game series after its huge success. Several sequels were released.
Gameplay of PacMan
PacMan falls under the genre of action. It is a video game with maze chase. PacMan is the fictional character in the video game. The PacMAn character is controlled by the player in the closed maze.
There are four ghosts in the maze with PacMan. These ghosts are differently colored. The main task is to eat all the dots in the maze. But all this has to be done by avoiding the ghosts. The ghosts are chasing PacMan. There are three lives indicated at the bottom with the PacMan logo. The fruit icon at the bottom of the screen serves as a level indicator. When PacMan consumes all the dots, the player moves on to the next level.
If the ghost catches and eats PacMan, he will lose a life. But there is a slight twist. Each of the four ghosts has its unique powers or what you can call a personality. There are energizers, also known as power pullets, at each of the maze’s four corners. When PacMan eats these energy balls the ghosts turn blue. If he eats the ghost they will return to their box in the center of the maze. By eating ghosts he gets extra points.
Thinking Behind The PacMan Game
Most of the games at that time were based on war or sports. These games were appealing to men only because of their graphics and violence. So Toru Iwatani decided to make a non-violent video game. He wanted to make a game that was appealing both to men and women. His point of view was that this would make the arcade appear as a family-friendly platform. He gave this game a lot of thinking.
The lengthiest game development at the time was this one, which took one year and five months to complete.
Inspiration for The PacMan Character
As the motive of the game at the time of development was to make it family-friendly, the character of the game should also be appealing to everyone. The characters were to be made cute and colorful. Every other game of that time was based on violence. So this game was made appealing to children, men, women, and everyone.
A pizza with a missing slice served as the model for the PacMan character. It was also based on a Japanese character named “Kuchi”. Kuchi means mouth. Whereas the four ghosts were made colorful and cute.
Success of PacMan
When the game was first released it was initially a modest success only. People said that it is good for a while then it becomes boring. Eventually, PacMan became very popular in Japan. According to yearly Game Machine rankings, it surpassed Space Invaders, which had led the charts for the previous two years, to become the 1980 arcade game with the biggest sales in Japan. Additionally, it was 1981’s fourth-highest-grossing arcade game.
The game PacMan was also popular in the US. More than 100,000 arcade devices were sold in a year, generating more than $1 billion in quarterly sales. The most profitable arcade game in America in 1981 was PacMan. In 1982, it came in second.
PacMan has been awarded eight awards in Guinness World Records.
Bandai Namco Entertainment’s mascot is currently the PacMan character.
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PacMan Merchandise and Television Series
After the huge success of PacMan, a wide variety of PacMan merchandise was marketed. There were more than 500 products related to the merchandise. By 1982 95-105 companies were licensed to sell PacMan products. PacMan merchandise sales had exceeded $1 billion by 1982 only in the US. These products included stickers, jewelry, accessories, bicycles, cereals, popsicles, t-shirts, toys, pasta, etc.
Hanna-Barbera was the company that created the PacMan animated series. In 1982–83, ABC broadcasted it. It was the most popular Saturday morning cartoon program by the end of 1982.
2013 was the year of the release of “Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures,” an animated series on Disney XD. Later in 2019, it was also aired on Discovery Family.
Sequel of PacMan
One of the most enduring video game franchises is PacMan. It sparked a significant number of sequels.
This video game was a huge success. Many clones of this game were also made.
PacMan 30th Anniversary and Google Doodle
PacMan 30th anniversary was on May 21, 2010. The anniversary comes every year. But there was something special about this anniversary. In honor of PacMan’s 30th anniversary, Google updated its homepage logo to a playable version of the game.
In 2010, it was anticipated that more than 1 billion individuals around the world played the Google Doodle version. Google later created a separate page for this game.
The World’s Biggest Pac-Man game was released by Soap Creative to commemorate the 30th anniversary of PacMan. Working jointly with Microsoft and Namco made this possible. It was a multiplayer user-created game. Users could create their own interlocking mazes.
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