The Legend of PAC-MAN

Sir Isaac Newton saw an apple fall from a tree, and after that, the world had gravity. Benjamin Franklin flew a kite, and then we had electricity bills to pay. Namco programmer Tohru Iwatani went out for pizza, and the gaming world was never the same again. PAC-MAN was born.

The face of Pac Man himself on Xbox 360

Twenty-five years after seeing a missing slice of pizza from a pie and thinking the shape made an interesting character design, PAC-MAN has made more money, been reborn in more spinoffs, sequels, ports, translations, and alter-egos, and been played by more gamers than any other video game in the history of electronic entertainment. This, coupled with his most recent debut on Xbox Live® Arcade, and it could be said that many gamers have been practicing for those 200 achievement points for their whole lives.

All it took was a slight title change to bring this mega-hit smash from Japan to North America. Pac Man's Japanese handle was Puck-Man. The re-christening was to prevent the obvious sharpie-driven vandalism to the game's cabinet art.

For the person who has been living in a cave, a coma, or watching too much daytime television for the last three decades, a brief refresher might be in order. PAC-MAN was unique in 1981, in that it was an essentially non-violent videogame. There were no spacecraft, weapons, bullets, missiles, or lasers, and it was probably the only game in the arcade in which you didn't actually shoot anything.

Until now, the Xbox 360 has been the only console
without a version of PAC-MAN

This difference gave PAC-MAN, the conscientious objector, a broader appeal to older gamers as well as to some of the gals who might not have been interested in killing space invaders or blowing up asteroids. The game had extremely simple controls—one four-directional joystick—and the only thing you had to do was navigate the iconic main character around a blue maze, continuously chomping a trail of small yellow dots, or 'pellets'. The only thing standing in his way is a group of four ghosts.

If Pac Man touches any of these ghosts, it means instant death to him, so he has to stay alert as he weaves through the maze eating pellets. Pac Man is not defenseless, however. If he eats one of the four "power pellets" located in the corners of the maze, he can chomp on the ghosts that pursue him.

Do you really need instructions?

The four ghosts Pac Man faces off against each have a unique color and personality. The red ghost, Blinky, is the most aggressive, and will always be on Pac Man's tale. Pinky's nickname is Speedy, but he isn't actually the fastest, he's just a lot faster than the two slow ghosts. Inky will seem like he's running from you until he gets the drop on you and stabs you in the back. Clyde wanders around aimlessly, getting in your way and disrupting your strategy.

The unprecedented success of PAC-MAN created a demand for sequels, and companies fell over themselves trying to out-innovate the creativity and the success of the original. More than twenty different companies dipped their cup in the Pac well to create sequels for the game or to translate the game onto home platforms of the time.

Some of the strangest arcade sequels—all only dubiously successful—included Baby PAC-MAN, a hybrid video-game/pinball game combining the interests of both Bally and Midway, the sister companies responsible for PAC-MAN's North American immigration and Professor PAC-MAN, a video quiz game that flopped completely, originally planned to be the genesis of the bartop video games you can find in most pubs today.

You don't wanna mess with the Pac when he's all hopped up on pellets.

Ms. PAC-MAN , the only sequel to approach the success of the original game, actually hails from the United States and began as an amateur modification of the original arcade game. Demand for sequels also brought us such strange iterations as Exciting New PAC-MAN Plus, Super PAC-MAN, PAC & Pal, Junior PAC-MAN, and even a VR PAC-MAN in the nineties that promised to show you "Pac Man's view of the world."

Doctors began diagnosing what became known as "PAC-MAN elbow" long before scary phrases like "carpal tunnel syndrome" became known in everyday parlance. Gamers might also be surprised to know that Pac Man was rescuing princesses in a side scrolling action platformer well before a certain overall-clad plumber decided to answer the same calling, in 1983's PacLand.

The merchandising machine that built itself around the Pac Man phenomenon also made sure that the little yellow pizza-pie character showed up in everything from a Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning cartoon series to official Underoos ("the underwear that's fun to wear"). A chart-topping pop single, "PAC-MAN Fever," sold over two and a half million copies and even spawned imitators around the globe, including the German-language "PAC-MAN Fieber."

Until now, the Xbox 360™ has been just about the only recent console that has been without a version of PAC-MAN (viaNamco Museum games) to call its own. The Xbox Live Arcade release of PAC-MAN is his triumphant debut in high-definition, and is easily the most attractive presentation of the game to date, retaining all of its original simplicity.

High-score leaderboards bring PAC-MAN to the global arcade, and as of this writing, no one has cracked one million points, although the top gamer is very close. Unlockable achievements award points for cracking level 5, level 21, and for the perfect execution of eating all four ghosts on one power pellet, as well as pulling off the same feat all four times in one maze. Each maze cleared also offers its own unique fruit to be eaten, each of them also another achievement for your profile.

Whether you play for keeps or view it as a meditative exercise, PAC-MAN is still as fun today as it was twenty-five years ago, and with this newest release, it takes its rightful place of fame as the biggest game in history on the most powerful console in the land. Download it, and you'll remember right away why you never had any quarters or free time, any time from 1981 on.