It is yellow, it is cute and it appeals to all age groups. No, we are not talking about Pikachu but Pac-Man, born in Tokyo 40 years ago! The goal of the most famous arcade game is very simple: to swallow the gluttonous Pac-Man all the pills of the maze, and fruit from time to time to grab additional points, all while escaping the ghosts, which become more faster over the levels.
The game was originally called "Puck-Man", after a play on words with "paku", which means "to gobble" or "to swallow up" in Japanese. But the game was renamed Pac-Man when it was launched in the United States, for fear that players would have fun replacing the initial "P" with an "F" ...
A game for women and couples
The game's creator, Toru Iwatani, got the idea for the shape of Pac-Man by taking a small slice of pizza, and realizing that the rest of the dish looked like a head with a wide open mouth. Originally, Pac-Man was a game for women and couples - a different audience than that, usually male, fond of shooting games on aliens like Space Invaders , which were all the rage in Japan, said Toru Iwatani in an interview with Wired magazine published in 2010.
The very first game machine had been installed in a cinema in the trendy Tokyo district of Shibuya, rather than in an arcade room with violent games. And the success was immediate, according to its creator.
One of the most famous brands in the world
As for his idea of being able to make Pac-Man go from hunted to hunter, it came from the character of American "comic" and cartoon Popeye, the sailor whose forces multiply as soon as he swallows a box of spinach. Creation of the Japanese video game publisher Namco, which merged in 2005 with its rival Bandai, Pac-Man was subsequently transposed to all video game media, from consoles to PCs and smartphones.
It has been recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the most popular arcade game of all time. The game has become a lucrative franchise for its publishers, with many variations such as "Ms. Pac-Man", "Pac-Panic" (or Pac-Attack), "Pac-in-Time" or even "Pac 'n Roll " Bandai Namco says that the Pac-Man brand is "one of the best known in the world", with a brand awareness rate of 90%.
A perfect score at more than 3 million points
In 2010, for the 30th anniversary of the original game, Google had offered internet users unlimited parts of Pac-Man on its home page instead of the usual logo of its search engine: the first playable "Doodle" from Google. Subsequently, the geolocation site Google Maps had also transformed its maps into a giant Pac-Man game.
According to Wired magazine , the highest possible score in the game is 3,333,360 points, at the end of the 256th and last level. Provided you have never been devoured once by the ghosts and have eaten all the pastilles, fruits and ghosts possible.
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