13
PAC-MAN (1980): JAPANESE GUMPTION, AMERICAN CONSUMPTION
Now that we're awash with countless videogame mascots, it's hard to imagine when there was only one—a little yellow pizza with a missing slice, named Pac-Man. Yet long before the days of Master Chief, Lara Croft, Sonic, and of course Mario, this humble pie guy chomped out of the arcades and into public consciousness.1 Here was proof that videogames were more than the sum of their parts; they could have personality and charisma. Pac-Man eventually found his way onto lunchboxes, breakfast cereal, Saturday morning cartoons, a hit song, toys, and pretty much anything else that could be affixed with his image and sold in a store. Indeed, the cavalcade of collectibles eventually grew large enough to warrant a book of its own, Deborah Palicia's Pac-Man Collectibles (Schiffer Publishing, 2002), which offers more than 400 photographs of Pac-Man products. Americans were as eager to gobble up Pac-Man as he was to chow down on power pellets!
But what made this game so overwhelmingly popular, and what were the repercussions for the fledgling gaming industry? In this chapter, we'll explore the history of one of the most important and definitive games in the videogame canon, Toru Iwatani's 1980 masterpiece for Namco, Pac-Man.
According to legend, the inspiration for Pac-Man—or Puck Man, as it was originally known—came from a pizza. Iwatani looked down at his pizza after removing a slice, and wondered if the shape could work as a videogame character. Unfortunately for the many journalists and historians who have told this story, it is only “half-true” according to Iwatani. He claims the shape was simply a rounded version of the Japanese word for mouth (kuchi).2 The game's title has a similar origin; in Japanese slang, “paku paku” represents the mouth opening and closing during eating; it was a small stretch to Puck Man. What the popular myth does get right, though, is the centrality of eating, or consumption rather than destruction. After all, everyone enjoys a good meal. Then as now, it was speculated that one reason more girls weren't into gaming was the overwhelmingly violent or serious nature of most games. A cute, accessible, and addictive maze game might help the industry expand to other demographics. At the time, arcades in both Japan and the U.S. were dominated by Space Invaders and its clones (see Chapter 16, “Space Invaders (1978): The Japanese Descend”). Although these games were tremendously successful, Iwatani still felt the industry was too narrowly focused and wanted to do something about it.
Title screen from the arcade version of Pac-Man, showcasing the emphasis on its characters.
Pac-Mans’s legendary maze.
Unfortunately, Iwatani's Puck Man wasn't initially a hit in Japan; Namco's Galaxian, a colorful Space Invaders-style shooter, fared much better. Midway Manufacturing imported both games into the United States, altering Puck Man’s cabinet to make it both cheaper to produce and more eye-catching (bright yellow instead of white). They also changed the name to Pac-Man, fearing that pranksters would have too much fun rendering Puck Man into something far less appropriate. Fortunately for Midway and Iwatani, the game hit Western shores like a tsunami, flooding first into arcades, then the wider market. Soon, every pizza parlor, supermarket, and drug store in the United States had to have one. It was all Midway could do to keep up with the demand for the quarter-munching machines, churning out a hundred thousand of them in 1980 (three times that number were produced over the next seven years). The machines were well worth the investment; in total they raked in over a billion dollars worth of quarters in the first year alone.3 Iwatani's desire to appeal to nontraditional gamers succeeded: Pac-Man’s appeal went far beyond young men; small kids and their moms could all enjoy Pac-Man. The 2005 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records even awarded Pac-Man the designation of “most successful coin-operated game” in history.
Pac-Man’s initial success seemed to rest mostly on its unique gameplay, which is most often described as a “maze chase game,” a designation that emphasizes the geometrical layout of the screen. Pac-Man was certainly not the first game in this early genre; precursors include Magnavox's 1972 two-player game for its Odyssey home system, Cat and Mouse, a very simple game that used an overlay (a mostly transparent screen placed over the television screen) to show a maze. Players, represented by white dots, moved about the maze, being careful not to hit the walls—if they did, the game reset their position at the start. One player controls a mouse, which must get through the maze to a “mouse house,” erstwhile avoiding the cat, controlled by the other player. Likewise, there was Gotcha, a 1973 arcade game designed by Atari. This simple two-player game had players chasing each other through a maze shown from a top-down perspective. However, it never really caught on, with the game arousing little more than controversy—versions of the game's controllers featured two skin-tone bulges that resembled female breasts. Interestingly, Midway had released its own arcade maze game in 1976, The Amazing Maze Game. Though hardly as impressive as the title implies, the game improved on Gotcha in several ways. First, players were challenged to escape the maze rather than merely catch the opponent. Second, players could compete with each other or a computer-controlled opponent. None of these games, however, are played much today, having long been eclipsed by Pac-Man and its descendants in terms of playability, personality, and popularity.
There were many maze game precursors to Pac-Man, even on the most modest systems, like 1978’s Tunnel Vision and Kat and Mouse by Michael Riley for the Commodore PET computer.
Although Pac-Man has much in common with these earlier games, it relies entirely on computer-controlled opponents (the “monsters” or “ghosts”); the game's two-player mode simply has players alternating turns. Competition is thus indirect and limited to the high score table. Indeed, the artificial intelligence of the ghosts is perhaps the game's most-discussed feature. The ghosts do not wander randomly throughout the game's single maze, but follow programs that ostensibly give each one a unique personality. Savvy players quickly learned that following a certain path through the maze, called a “pattern,” allowed them to achieve very high scores. Players who knew the patterns could play indefinitely on a single quarter, as they caused the game to react in a predictable manner every time. This fact no doubt displeased the owners of the machines, but magazines and eventually books happily published the patterns for anyone who cared to master the game.
Nibbler was a 1982 arcade game by Rock-Ola where the player, as the titular snake, grows longer every time he eats. The player must be careful to avoid having the snake collide with himself. Broderbund's Serpentine (1982; Apple II, Commodore 64, and others) and Magnavox's K.C.’s Krazy Chase! (1982; Odyssey2) created excellent home variations of this alternate type of maze chase gameplay. Earlier forms of the basic gameplay mechanics include Gremlin's Hustle (1977; Arcade) and Atari's Surround (1978; Atari 2600 VCS), though many gamers will recognize it simply as “Snake” or some variation thereof.
However, modern fans who wish to truly dominate the game might want to emulate Billy Mitchell,4 the world's first perfect Pac-Man player: rather than devise or follow patterns, Mitchell worked out methods to manipulate the ghosts into the corners of his choice. “I chose to do it this way because I wanted to demonstrate the depths of my abilities,” says the reigning champ, defying anyone else to duplicate his amazing feat.5 However, players who take the game as seriously as Mitchell are in the extreme minority. For most modern gamers, Pac-Man is a casual game; it's something you can play for five minutes while waiting for a pizza. If you have to leave before the game is over, who cares? For this reason, among countless other platforms, the game has made its way onto most games-capable mobile devices, including cell phones.
Pac-Man also features a small set of cutscenes or “intermissions,” one of the first games to have this often controversial enhancement.6 These humorous sketches star Pac-Man and Blinky, the red ghost. Unlike modern games where long cutscenes often interrupt a game's pacing, these charmingly brief segments in Pac-Man gave gamers a chance to relax their wrists, while also helping to establish personalities for what would otherwise have been fairly abstract characters.
A scene from the first Pac-Man intermission.
Naturally, Atari and other console manufacturers were eager to cash in on the Pac-Man craze, but efforts to adapt the arcade game to the consoles of the day were mixed at best. The most infamous is Atari's Pac-Man (1981) for its Atari 2600 VCS console. The popularity of the arcade game had generated a huge demand for this home version, but developer Tod Frye's company mandated effort to rush the game's completion by the all-important Christmas season resulted in one of the worst ports of all time. Even by the standards of the Atari 2600’s humble capabilities, the audio, visuals, and gameplay were dismal. Although millions of unsuspecting or desperate Atari 2600 owners purchased the cartridge, word quickly spread, and Atari was soon overwhelmed with unsold inventory. Though this is an oversimplification of the market dynamics at the time, together, the Atari 2600 versions of Pac-Man and the equally rushed E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) are often blamed for the sharp decline in videogame sales in 1983 and The Great Videogame Crash the following year. Nevertheless, most other ports, such as Mike Winans’ for the Mattel Intellivision in 1983, published under Atari's Atarisoft label, adhered more faithfully to the original.
Although Atari would rectify the issues on both the Atari 2600 VCS and other platforms with future Pac-Man and Pac-Man family releases, the original VCS adaptation, pictured, was a technical disaster.
Magnavox's catalog entry for their superior maze game, K.C. Munchkin!.
Having paid millions for the exclusive home translation rights, Atari was determined to stop competitive maze chase games from reaching market, particularly on non-Atari hardware. Even though programmer Ed Averett took obvious pains to distinguish 1981’s K.C. Munchkin! Magnavox Odyssey2 game from Namco's Pac-Man, providing four mazes, moving dots, and user-programmable play-fields, Atari felt it was close enough that it infringed on its exclusivity. Magnavox's game sold briskly at first and was far superior to what would be Atari's weak attempt for the 2600. Pac-Man-reminiscent cover art on K.C. Munchkin!’s box and manual aside, there were enough differences and enough danger in Atari's attempt to corner the entire home maze chase genre that Magnavox won in court. Unfortunately, Magnavox became complacent in victory, and Atari eventually won on a hard-fought appeal. Despite the abundance of other maze chase games far more derivative that remained on the market going forward, it was K.C. Munchkin! and Magnavox that would ultimately be the most damaged. With K.C. Munchkin! off store shelves, the void was filled by its voice-enhanced sequel, K.C.’s Krazy Chase! (1982), which—although generally considered less fun—again took the maze chase concept in a slightly different direction while still retaining the unique ability for gamers to create their own mazes. As Averett put it, “K.C.’s Crazy Chase was designed soon after the K.C. Munchkin! court exercise and did a good job of capturing the moment at Magnavox. There was something about the adversary biting the behind of little K.C. that appealed to everyone at the moment. I had another result planned when the bad guys bit K.C., but that is one time I did not get my way in the design or in the real world.”7
In 1981, Midway released an unauthorized sequel to Pac-Man in the arcade called Ms. Pac-Man, which was itself based on Crazy Otto, an unauthorized Pac-Man conversion (mod) kit developed by engineers at the General Computer Corporation. Midway adopted the game as a sequel to Pac-Man, altering its appearance to make it more in line with the original. Now celebrated as one of the best games ever designed, Ms. Pac-Man improved on its predecessor in several key areas. First, the character was less abstract, now sporting a bright red bow, lipstick, and a beauty mark. Many critics claim this change made the game more appealing to women, though the game was popular with men as well. The sequel also added new mazes, new behavior for the ghosts, and new intermissions concerned with the budding relationship between Mr. and Ms. Pac-Man. Ms. Pac-Man was widely admired by fans of the original, many of whom concluded that it was superior. Some legal wrangling followed between Midway and Namco, who was rightfully concerned about Midway's questionable conduct. Nevertheless, the popularity of the game eventually persuaded Namco to adopt Ms. Pac-Man as an official sequel, and in a combination cabinet with Galaxian sequel Galaga, remains among the most commonly spotted arcade games today. This time around, Atari took more care in porting the game to the 2600 in 1982, and the results were comparatively impressive in terms of playability and overall faithfulness to the arcade release.
Screenshot from the still-popular Ms. Pac-Man.
A few months after Ms. Pac-Man's debut in arcades, Midway released Super Pac-Man, Namco's official and long-awaited sequel. This sequel substantially altered the gameplay of the original. Most noticeably, Pac-Man no longer eats dots, but fruits and keys. As the title suggests, Pac-Man can now gain super powers by munching a “super pellet.” In super form, Pac-Man is twice as big and invulnerable, but cannot eat ghosts. Despite these innovations, the game isn't nearly as popular as Ms. Pac-Man, though it has its share of loyal fans. Bally and Midway (later Bally Midway) released other unauthorized Pac-Man-related games throughout the early 1980s, including Pac-Man Plus (1982), a minor alteration of the original that manipulates the effects of power pellets; an innovative, but notoriously difficult pinball/videogame hybrid named Baby Pac-Man (1982), and a poorly received trivia game called Professor Pac-Man (1983). Towards the middle of the decade, the franchise drifted further away from the familiar maze game setup, opting instead for platforming. Though innovative at the time of its 1984 release, Pac-Land was a lackluster side-scrolling platformer (see Chapter 19, “Super Mario Bros. (1985): How High Can Jumpman Get?” for more) that had little in common with its predecessors. Similarly, Namco released Pac-Mania in 1987, which took the maze game into an isometric perspective and featured boards that were much larger than a single screen. The key innovation was Pac-Man's ability to jump at any time, including over enemy ghosts.
Perhaps the oddest Pac-Man game is Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures, released in 1994 by Namco for the Nintendo Super NES and Sega Genesis. Again eschewing the maze layout for a side-scrolling game, Pac-Man 2 had players using a slingshot to try to keep Pac-Man from stumbling into trouble. The oddball gameplay failed to impress critics and gamers. Namco followed up that same year with Pac-in-Time, which is a rebranded version of Kalisto's Fury of the Furries (1993), for Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga/CD32, and PC. The high production values made the game more popular than Pac-Man 2, and helped extend the life of the venerable franchise, despite its tenuous connection to the earlier games.
In anticipation of Pac-Man’s twentieth anniversary, Namco released Pac-Man World for the Sony PlayStation in 1999, a 3D mix of adventure gaming and simple problem solving that retains many of the maze, and pac-dot-, fruit-, and ghost-eating elements of the original. Pac-Man World was followed by several sequels, including Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness (2000; Sega Dreamcast, Sony PlayStation, and others), which was more puzzle-oriented and even more faithful to the original source.
The latest true Pac-Man maze game worthy of mention is Pac-Man Championship Edition (or Pac-Man C.E.), released by Namco Bandai in 2007 for Xbox Live Arcade on Microsoft's Xbox 360. Iwatani designed the game as his last project before entering retirement. Despite trippy, high-definition visuals and sound combined with wild new game modes, the game stays faithful to the original game's concepts and timing. Pac-Man C.E. was well received and proved a worthy tribute to its legendary namesake—a distinction that few other classic game updates and remakes can claim.
As part of the Namco Classic Collection Volume 2, the fast-paced Pac-Man Arrangement was released to the arcades in 1996 (home ports followed) and included two-player simultaneous play, additional enemies, updated graphics and music, and a true ending. Besides the original version of Pac-Man, other Namco classics included in the collection were Rally-X and Dig Dug.
As mentioned earlier, despite the risks, there were countless clones, knock-offs, and derivatives of Pac-Man throughout the 1980s, some of which tried to advance the depth-of-play mechanics. One such title was Data East's Lock’ n’ Chase, published by Taito in 1981 for the arcade and later by Mattel for a variety of home console and computing platforms. The player's character is a thief who can open and close doors to collect coins and treasure while avoiding policemen. On the other hand, Piranha, a 1981 game by GL, despite a visual overhaul, more or less replaced Pac-Man with a piranha and the ghosts with squids. Others took more of a middling approach to their design considerations, like Commodore's Cosmic Cruncher (1982) for their VIC-20 computer, a game in which Pac-Man had been replaced by the company's logo, but balanced its lack of innovation with a large number of levels and mazes.
The Pac-Man games have always been popular targets for alternative videogame products, like MGA's Pac-Man Electronic Handheld Game (2005), Coleco's Pac-Man Tabletop (1981), and JAKKS Pacific's Namco Featuring Pac-Man Plug It In & Play TV Games (2004).
Make Trax is a 1981 arcade game by Williams that reverses the consumption paradigm. Instead of picking up pellets or other objects, the player's task is to use a paintbrush to color the level, all the while avoiding fish (the game is set in an aquarium). Though certainly based on an odd and illogical premise, the game is still charming and quite fun to play.
Universal Games’ Lady Bug (1981; Arcade) is, as the name implies, based on an insect theme. The player guides a ladybug through a maze, eating dots and bonus objects while avoiding other insects. One nice innovation here is a gate system. The player can shift these gates to divert enemies, but they can always find a way around.
Ultimately, what may be even more important than Pac-Man's gameplay is its cultural impact. Rarely has a game managed to attract so much mainstream attention; even today's biggest and best-known franchises, such as Halo and Madden (see Chapters 5 and 10, respectively), pale in comparison. Although the reign of the maze chase game was relatively short-lived, Pac-Man’s legacy continues to this day, as few other videogame characters are as universally recognizable as the little, yellow, and different, circular wedge who was almost named Puck Man.
Exidy's Mouse Trap (1981; Arcade) shares Lady Bug’s gate system, but is slightly more complex: the colored gates can only be activated by tripping a corresponding button located elsewhere in the maze. In this game, the player controls a mouse on the run from cats; the power pills turn the player's mouse into a dog who can eat them.
1983’s Ms. Candyman by L&M Software and Bit Fiddlers was one of the Bally Professional Arcade's (Astrocade) answers to the Pac-Man craze; every platform had to have its maze chase game.
The Pac-Man family of games continues to be a favorite target of homebrew authors on a variety of platforms. Bob DeCrescenzo's hack of the original Atari 7800 version of Ms. Pac-Man (1984, but released 1986) has resulted in 2006’s Pac-Man Collection, which contains well over a half-dozen different games and variations, filling a glaring hole in the system's software library. A similarly titled and even more impressive Pac-Man Collection homebrew cartridge from Opcode Games was released in late 2009 for the Coleco ColecoVision.
1See Chapter 5, “Doom (1993): The First-Person Shooter Takes Control,” for more on Master Chief; Chapter 18, “Super Mario 64/Tomb Raider (1996): The Third Dimension,” for more on both Mario and Lara Croft; and Chapter 19, “Super Mario Bros. (1985): How High Can Jumpman Get?” for more on both Mario and Sonic.
2See Marty Goldberg's “Pac-Man: The Phenomenon” at http://classicgaming.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Articles.Detail&id=249.
3See Steven L. Kent's book, The Ultimate History of Video Games (Three Rivers Press, 2001).
4See the 2007 movie, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, or Joshuah Bearman's article “The Perfect Game” in the July 2008 issue of Harper's Magazine, for more on the colorful Mitchell.
5See GameSpot's interview with Mitchell at http://www.gamespot.com/features/vgs/universal/hist_pacman/p11_01.html.
6See Chapter 7, “Final Fantasy VII (1997): It's Never Final in the World of Fantasy,” for more on cutscenes.