Pac-man

Pac-Man is an arcade game developed by Namco and licensed for distribution in the USA by Midway, first released in Japan in 1979. Immensely popular from its original release to the present day, Pac-Man is universally considered as one of the classics of the medium, virtually synonymous with video games, and an icon of 1980s popular culture. Upon its release, the game became a social phenomenon that sold a bevy of merchandise and also inspired an animated television series and a Top 40 pop single.

When Pac-Man was released, most arcade video games in North America were primarily space shooters such as Space Invaders and Defender or Asteroids; the most visible minority were sports games (mostly derivative of PONG). Pac-Man succeeded by creating a new genre and appealing to both males and females. Pac-Man is often credited with being a landmark in video game history, and is among the most famous arcade games of all time. The character also appears in over 30 officially licensed games and sequels, as well as in numerous unauthorized clones and bootlegs.

Gameplay
The player controls Pac-Man as he moves through a maze, eating pac-dots. When all dots are eaten, Pac-Man is taken to the next stage. 4 ghosts roam the maze, trying to catch Pac-Man. If a ghost touches Pac-Man, a life is lost. When all lives have been lost, the game ends. During Pac-Man gameplay, lives are usually lost by "digging your own grave"; it is easy to situate Pac-Man within the maze so that escape from the ghosts is impossible.

Near the corners of the maze are four large round power-up objects known as "energizers" or "power pellets", 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 reset back to 200 each time another Power Pellet is eaten, so it is advantageous for the player to eat all four ghosts on each pellet. If a ghost is eaten, its eyes return to the "ghost pen" where it is regenerated in its normal colour. (This may happen while the other ghosts are still blue, if the ghost is near the pen when eaten.) The ghosts flash white up to five times before they become dangerous again. The amount of time the ghosts remain vulnerable varies from one board to the next, but the time period generally becomes shorter as the game progresses. Starting with the 17th board (the 5th key), then continuing from board 19 to the end, the ghosts no longer turn blue at all, though eating an energizer still causes them to reverse direction. The 240 regular dots on each level are worth ten points each, and energizers are worth fifty points each. Additionally, prizes commonly referred to as “fruit” (even though several of them are not fruits) appear twice during each board just below the ghost pen &mdash; eating a fruit scores extra bonus points. The prizes change throughout the game, and their point values increase (see the table at right).

Pac-Man is awarded a bonus life one time only, 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).

History
The game was developed primarily by Namco employee Toru Iwatani over eighteen months. The original title was pronounced pakku-man and was inspired by the Japanese onomatopoeic phrase paku-paku taberu (パクパク食べる), where paku-paku describes (the sound of) the mouth movement when widely opened and then closed in succession. Although it is often cited that the character’s shape was inspired by a pizza missing a slice, he admitted in a 1986 interview that it was a half-truth and the character design also came from simplifying and rounding out the Japanese character for mouth, kuchi (口) as well as the basic concept of eating. Iwatani's efforts to appeal to a wider audience &mdash; beyond the typical demographics of young boys and teenagers &mdash; would eventually lead him to adding elements of a maze. The result was a game he entitled PUCK MAN. When first launched in Japan in 1979 by Namco, the game received a lukewarm response, as Space Invaders and other games of similar type were far more popular at the time.

The following year, however, the game was picked up for manufacture in the U.S. by Bally division Midway, under the altered title Pac-Man (see below). American audiences welcomed a breakaway from conventions set by Space Invaders, which resulted in unprecedented popularity and revenue that rivaled its successful predecessor, as even Iwatani was impressed with U.S. sales. The game soon became a worldwide phenomenon within the video game industry, resulting in numerous sequels and merchandising tie-ins. Pac-Man’s success bred imitation, and an entire genre of maze-chase video games soon emerged, but none equalled the original in profit or popularity.

Competitors and distributors were taken completely by surprise by Pac-Man’s success in North America in 1980. Marketing executives who saw Pac-Man at a trade show prior to release completely overlooked the game (along with the now classic Defender), while they looked to a racing car game called Rally-X as the game to outdo that year. The appeal of Pac-Man was such that the game caught on immediately with the public; it quickly became far more popular than anything seen in the game industry before. Pac-Man outstripped Asteroids as the greatest selling arcade game of the time,

Localization
For the North American market, the name was changed from PUCK MAN to Pac-Man (actually closer to the original Japanese pronunciation) because puck was similar in spelling and pronunciation to a common English expletive, and vandals could easily change it. 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 multicolored 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 unique and original game design inspired game publishers to be innovative rather than conservative, and encouraged them to speculate on game designs that broke from existing genres. Pac-Man introduced an element of humor into video games that designers sought to imitate, and 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 publication 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 10 Most Popular Video games" 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.

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 ghosts. 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 pinkness. 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, pinked, dragging his pelt behind him. This intermission plays after Boards 9, 13 and 17.

Perfect play
A perfect Pac-Man game is defined as one where the player completes all 256 levels with a maximum point score and without losing a life. Billy Mitchell, of Hollywood, FL, achieved the feat in six hours. To attain the maximum possible score of 3,333,360 points, it was necessary for Mitchell to eat every fruit, every Power Pellet, every blue ghost and every dot for 256 boards without losing a single life.

Split-screen level
This 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 impossible 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. In September, 1983, Walter Day, Chief Scorekeeper at the Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard, took the U.S. National Video Game Team on a tour of the East Coast to visit video game players who claimed they could get through the "Split-Screen." No video game player could demonstrate this ability. Later, in 1999, 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.

Through tinkering, the details of the Split-Screen Level can be revealed. As playable through arcade game emulator MAME some ROMs of the game are equipped with a "rack test" within the DIP switches that will automatically clear a level of all dots as soon as it begins. This method not only makes reaching the long-mythical 256th board easier (thus making detailed analysis possible) but also allows a demonstration of what happens after the board has been cleared:

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.

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 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 Color Edition for the Game Boy Color (1999), Apple iPods (fifth generation), Pac-Man Collection for the Game Boy Advance (2001), and it is unlockable in Pac 'n Roll for the Nintendo DS. 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 re-released this game in arcades. In 2001, Namco released a 20-Year Reunion game that combined Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga in one cabinet. To play the original Pac-Man on this machine, move the joystick in this order on the "Press Start Button" that appears after one inserts one's coins: up, up, up, down, down, down, left, right, left, right, left. If done correctly, one should hear a sound, and Ms. Pac-Man will change color. Press the Ms. Pac-Man start button, and one will be able to play Pac-Man. It should be noted that Ms. Pac-Man machines are far easier to locate in today's arcades than a dedicated Pac-Man. In 2005, Namco released a board openly featuring all three of the games on the 20-Year Reunion board in honor of Pac-Man's 25th Anniversary.

The NES version was successful enough to become one of the CLASSIC NES SERIES GBA games.

Namco's wireless division released a line of PAC-MAN games for the cell phone in 2002, starting with the original arcade version and following up with Pac-Man game extensions like Pac-Man Bowling and Pac-Man Pinball. This division (Namco Networks America Inc.) also launched a networked game, Ms. Pac-Man For Prizes, in 2004. Pac-Man mobile games are available on both BREW and Java platforms across major cellular carriers, as well as on Palm PDAs and Windows PC phones.

Sequels
Pac-Man spawned numerous sequels, though none of them were as popular as the original. Of these, the most significant title was Ms. Pac-Man. Originally created as an unauthorized hack of the original game called Crazy Otto by a small group known as General Computer Corporation, it was eventually sold to Bally Midway without Namco's permission. Crazy Otto was actually seen in a photograph in Time magazine, mislabeled as the original Pac-Man. The game featured several improvements and changes from the original Pac-Man, including faster gameplay, more mazes, new intermissions, and moving bonus items. Some consider Ms. Pac-Man to be a superior game to the original, and even the best in the entire series. Eventually Bally Midway struck a deal with Namco to make Ms. Pac-Man an officially licensed sequel, although the American company continued to release several unauthorized spin-off games later on, such as Pac-Man Plus, Baby Pac-Man and Professor Pac-Man. These other titles were generally considered inferior and unimportant, serving to oversaturate the market for Pac-Man games.

Other video games
Namco often puts the characters of Pac-Man into their other games, as actual opponents or subtle references. Some of the most prominent uses include the Ridge Racer series of games and Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune. In addition, similar to Namco x Capcom, Pac-Man appears as a statue in Tales of Symphonia, and also as a part of alternative costume of Presea that is based on the Namco character Klonoa. In another Tales game, Tales of the Abyss, playable character Jade Curtiss's main outfit has a belt with a buckle shaped like Pac-Man. Because of this, the Pac-Man appears to be eating the belt holes, much like an in-game Pac-Man eating dots. Talim's 1P costume in Soul Calibur II and III both feature a Pac-Man emblem on her necklace.

Pac-Man is a playable character in the Mario Kart Arcade GP and Mario Kart Arcade GP 2 games; in fact, Pac-Man is one of the first non-Nintendo characters to appear in a Nintendo game. Ms. Pac-Man and the red ghost Blinky are also playable. 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.

Anna Kournikova's Smash Court Tennis featured Pac-Man as a secret unlockable character. He looked exactly like his 3D render. To unlock him, the player had to complete the Times Square court under "Street Tournament" six times.

In Wolfenstein 3D (1992), there was a secret level that was a remake of one of the mazes in Pac-Man, complete with Pac-Man ghosts that would chase the player. They could not be killed. The dots were replaced with treasure items and the power pills were replaced with extra lives.

In Baten Kaitos, Pac-Man appeared as a card/weapon that was unlocked by performing a combo involving fruit.

A carving of Pac-Man eating a pill, along with a ghost from Pac-Man, could be seen in the fighting game Mortal Kombat.

Games featuring Pac-Man

 * A mod for Doom II was created that could change all of the enemy creatures to Pac-Man characters. All other features of the game remained the same.


 * Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean: Pac-Man is a magnus that can be obtained by combo-ing a large amount of fruit magnus. The version of Pac-Man from Pac-Land can be obtained in a similar way.


 * Baten Kaitos Origins (2006): Pac-Man is a magnus given to one to take care of by Quzman. He will eat any magnus that is around him, forcing one to 'trap' him between inedible magnus.  After eating a certain number of magnus, he will transform into Pac-Land and eventually Pac-Mania.


 * Blast Corps (by Rareware) had a pac-man tribute secret level featuring pac-man styled game play in a maze where one used the games bulldozer to light beacons in the same way pac-man eats dots.