Video games. 40 years of Pac man, the most famous arcade in the world
2020-05-22T18:25:04.953Z
Pac man turns 40. In fact, four decades have passed since the debut of the video game produced by Namco starring the most famous 'bright yellow ball' in the world, the circle (in video games was in two dimensions) with a 'mouth' that opens and closes which runs in a maze noisily devouring dots and occasionally fruits to get extra points, while avoiding four cunning ghosts called Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde. The player must guide a yellow spherical creature, called Pac-Man, making them eat all the numerous dots scattered neatly inside the maze and, in doing this, must avoid being touched by four "ghosts", under penalty of immediate loss of one of the lives available. To facilitate the task, the player has, at the corners of the game screen, four special "pills" ("power pills") that turn the situation upside down making the ghosts vulnerable, which turn blue and, for exactly 10 seconds, invert their running; to earn points, it is possible at this stage to go hunting for the same ghosts, to eat them. Once engulfed, however, they return to the base (the rectangle in the center of the screen) in the form of a pair of eyes, to regenerate and attack Pac-Man again. Once a labyrinth has been completed by engulfing all the dots, Pac-Man moves on to the next, identical in structure; the various stages are interspersed with humorous skits featuring Pac-Man and the ghost Akabei (also known as Blinky). Initially the name of the protagonist of the Iwatani arcade game was' Puck-Man ", taking up the Japanese onomatopoeic word 'paku-paku' deriving from the sound of chewing (its translation means" open and close your mouth "). however, that the American market audience could cripple its name convinced the producers to call it Pac-Man. "The video game was originally aimed at women and couples, an audience other than the violent alien shooters popular at that time in Japanese arcades," he explained the creator Toru Iwatani in an interview with Wired magazine in 2010. On how the idea of Pac-Man was born there are two versions: one according to which the inspiration comes from the Popeye cartoon series, in which the hero Nautico is able to face his nemesis Brutus only after a healthy dose of spinach. Another hypothesis, more 'folkloric', speaks of a dinner with friends attended by Tohru Iwatani: looking at a pizza that had been removed slice came the idea of Pac-Man. Fourteen months after that dinner, precisely on May 22, 1980, thanks to a development team of eight technicians, divided equally between software and hardware and headed by Shigeo Funaki, also including the musician Toshio Kai, the first video game was born. A technical characteristic of Pac-Man known to fans is that, although in theory the game can continue indefinitely, since each level is practically identical to the one just completed, you have reached level n. 256 due to a bug in the fruit-drawing function, half of the screen is filled with random symbols that make it impossible to complete the level. No more than seven fruits should appear in the bottom bar of the screen, this is because the code is in charge of drawing - just in case the level number is less than 8 - as many fruits as the current level is. Since the level number is recorded on a single byte, once the level 255 is completed (in hexadecimal "FF"), the function reads only the 00 from the hexadecimal number 100 (that is 256 in decimal). At this point the game believes to be in a level below 8 and try to trace 256 fruits on the bottom of the screen. This problem causes half of the screen to be filled with random symbols which make it almost impossible to complete the level. In fact, some fans have never resigned themselves to identifying level 256 as the end of the game, believing it possible, knowing the maze very well, to finish level 256. Although someone has claimed to have succeeded, there is no evidence that this is never happened. In 1999 Billy Mitchell, the perfect match record holder (the maximum possible score up to the bug, equal to 3,333,360) offered a prize of $ 100,000 to anyone who had provided proof of passing the level, but no one showed up. In forty years, thanks to an unparalleled success that transformed it into an icon of video games, there have been hundreds of games that repurposed Pac-Man, as protagonist or as a simple appearance, about forty of which were real new versions of the videogames made for almost all consoles and computers (also in mobile versions), in 2 and 3D, up to now retaining its reputation as a video game classic.
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May 22, 2020 Pac man turns 40. In fact, four decades have passed since the debut of the video game produced by Namco starring the most famous 'bright yellow ball' in the world, the circle (in video games was in two dimensions) with a 'mouth' that opens and closes which runs in a maze noisily devouring dots and occasionally fruits to get extra points, while avoiding four cunning ghosts called Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde. The player must guide a yellow spherical creature, called Pac-Man, making them eat all the numerous dots scattered neatly inside the maze and, in doing this, must avoid being touched by four "ghosts", under penalty of immediate loss of one of the lives available. To facilitate the task, the player has, at the corners of the game screen, four special "pills" ("power pills") that turn the situation upside down making the ghosts vulnerable, which turn blue and, for exactly 10 seconds, invert their running; to earn points, it is possible at this stage to go hunting for the same ghosts, to eat them. Once engulfed, however, they return to the base (the rectangle in the center of the screen) in the form of a pair of eyes, to regenerate and attack Pac-Man again. Once a labyrinth has been completed by engulfing all the dots, Pac-Man moves on to the next, identical in structure; the various stages are interspersed with humorous skits featuring Pac-Man and the ghost Akabei (also known as Blinky). Initially the name of the protagonist of the Iwatani arcade game was' Puck-Man ", taking up the Japanese onomatopoeic word 'paku-paku' deriving from the sound of chewing (its translation means" open and close your mouth "). however, that the American market audience could cripple its name convinced the producers to call it Pac-Man. "The video game was originally aimed at women and couples, an audience other than the violent alien shooters popular at that time in Japanese arcades," he explained the creator Toru Iwatani in an interview with Wired magazine in 2010. On how the idea of Pac-Man was born there are two versions: one according to which the inspiration comes from the Popeye cartoon series, in which the hero Nautico is able to face his nemesis Brutus only after a healthy dose of spinach. Another hypothesis, more 'folkloric', speaks of a dinner with friends attended by Tohru Iwatani: looking at a pizza that had been removed slice came the idea of Pac-Man. Fourteen months after that dinner, precisely on May 22, 1980, thanks to a development team of eight technicians, divided equally between software and hardware and headed by Shigeo Funaki, also including the musician Toshio Kai, the first video game was born. A technical characteristic of Pac-Man known to fans is that, although in theory the game can continue indefinitely, since each level is practically identical to the one just completed, you have reached level n. 256 due to a bug in the fruit drawing function, half of the screen is filled with random symbols which makes it impossible to complete the level. No more than seven fruits should appear in the bottom bar of the screen, this is because the code is in charge of drawing - just in case the level number is less than 8 - as many fruits as the current level is. Since the level number is recorded on a single byte, once the level 255 is completed (in hexadecimal "FF"), the function reads only the 00 from the hexadecimal number 100 (that is 256 in decimal). At this point the game believes to be in a level below 8 and try to trace 256 fruits on the bottom of the screen. This problem causes half of the screen to be filled with random symbols which make it almost impossible to complete the level. In reality, some fans have never resigned themselves to identifying level 256 as the end of the game, believing that it is possible, knowing the maze very well, to finish level 256. Although someone has claimed to have succeeded, there is no evidence that this is never happened. In 1999 Billy Mitchell, the perfect match record holder (the maximum possible score up to the bug, equal to 3,333,360) offered a prize of $ 100,000 to anyone who had provided proof of passing the level, but no one showed up. In forty years, thanks to an unparalleled success that transformed it into an icon of video games, there have been hundreds of games that proposed Pac-Man, as protagonist or as a simple appearance, about forty of which were real new versions of the videogames made for almost all consoles and computers (also in mobile versions), in 2 and 3D, up to now retaining its reputation as a video game classic.
