Without a doubt Pac-Man has become one of the most iconic video games with success and popularity in the 20th century. For decades, all kinds of players have enjoyed its gameplay and its uncontrollable action of devouring dots, with a yellow ball with a mouth, Pac-Man, while escaping from their archrivals, the ghosts. 

Over time, its popularity has not stopped growing, so some interesting facts have been discovered about how this popular game originated and about some changes it entailed over the years.

From Pac-Man sequels to his appearances in movies, TV series and even musical albums, and the records he has set in his 41 years of life. 

Pac-Man was developed in a year and a half

In 1977, Toru Iwatani started working at the game developer Namco. At the age of 22, he was at the forefront of a small team that developed the video game in a year and a half. On May 22, 1980, it was made public in Japan in the various arcades, very popular in the 1980s. Soon after, it would expand around the world. 

The creator was inspired by a pizza to create the character

The creator of the game, Toru Iwatani has told that the inspiration for the main character came to his mind when he was simply eating a piece of pizza and saw the shape that turned out on the plate. That image was what would serve him to create and transform the Japanese square character of the word Kuchi , which means “mouth”.

• The original name was Puckman. At first the first name of the game was Puckman, who in japanese, “paku” means chewing. But when the game was released in the United States it changed the name to prevent people from changing the “p” to the “f” to make it rudeness in English.

• Pac-Man was made with the intention of attracting the female audience. In the 1970s, almost all video games were focused on the male audience. They were violent, war or alien games. 

• In Pac-Man is impossible to win , that is, you can achieve the perfect game. You should get the highest score in the first 255 levels without making mistakes. The player has to eat all the points, the fruit and the ghosts. Total Points Reach 3,333,360.

• Every ghost looks for Pac-Man in his own way. At the beginning of each game, the four ghosts go in search of Pac-man. But everyone has a different color, a different personality and a different behavior.

• Pac-Man has become the most successful coin arcade machine in the world, according to the Guinness Book of Records. Between 1981 and 1987, almost 300,000 machines could be installed worldwide, reaching approximately 10 billion times in which it has been used.

• Iwatani had a Pixels cameo, as in the movie Pac-Man has an important role, (with colored cars instead of the ghosts that will fight Pac-Man).

• Pac-Man level 256 produces a glitch that causes half of the screen to split and in one of the halves it is occupied by characters without order

Which of all the curiosities did you find the most interesting? I read you in the comments.

Images:

Openclipart-vectors in Pixabay /Iwatani (Edited by me from canva.com)

Information base:

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