Perhaps it’s this poor attitude that resulted in Midway filing for Bankruptcy in 2009. Suffice to say, the two companies no longer did business with one another after the continuous breach of copyright. However, this didn’t prevent the latter from releasing four other unauthorized games – Professor Pac-Man, Jr. Naturally, Namco sued Midway and eventually a deal was made to release the game as an official sequel. Originally called Crazy Otto, the game eventually became what is now known as Ms. The worst perpetrator was Midway (if the name doesn’t result in the Mortal Kombat theme invading your head then you’re not old school enough) who bought a hacked version of the original game from General Computer Organization. Only one of thee aforementioned sequels involved Iwatani, and a large number of them were unauthorized and definitely not produced by Namco.The intense popularity of the game has spawned at least 31 sequels, ports, re-releases and remakes over the years – and these don’t include compilations.How the Gun in the Original Duck Hunt Worked.How Nintendo, Lego, Adidas, and 17 Other Major Companies Got Their Name.The Development of the Game “Pong” was Originally a Training Exercise and Not Meant to Be Sold to the Public.If you liked this article, you might also enjoy our new popular podcast, The BrainFood Show ( iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Feed), as well as: Now just imagine if Toru Iwatani had decided to go out for Chinese that night instead of pizza… Today, Pac-Man is often cited as the highest grossing video game of all time. Of course, they were wrong and Pac-Man was an overnight hit in the States, quickly surpassing Space Asteroids in revenue and made over a billion dollars in quarters within its first year by the 1990s, the arcade game had generated about two and a half billion dollars. In fact, a race car game by the name of Rally-X was expected to be the most popular of the year. Investors themselves didn’t see much merit in the game, and weren’t overly impressed by it at trade shows prior to its release. In Japan, the game received a mere lukewarm response, but the US was an entirely different story. Smart move.Īnother vital difference was its reception. Most importantly though, the name was changed out of fear of vandals turning the “P” into an “F”. Firstly, the difficulty was increased in order to appeal to a Western audience, as was the pace of the game and the artwork on the cabinet. Once the game was released in the United States, several things were changed. The game was changed to Puck Man before release due to the shape of the character. Iwatani wanted his game to appeal to a far wider demographic, which led him to add both the maze element of the game as well as the ‘kawaii’ ghost enemies (Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde). ![]() Up until this point in time, the most popular arcade games (such as Asteroids and Space Invaders) were primarily targeted towards and enjoyed by young boys and teenagers. Speaking of eating, the inspiration behind Pac-Man consuming food to gain power was reportedly derived from Popeye. In short – exactly what the Pac-Man character does to eat up his delicious dots. This is a onomatopoeic slang term that is used to describe the sound that a mouth makes when it’s opened widely and then closed again in close succession. What resulted was Pakkuman – a name that was derivative of the Japanese phrase “paku-paku taberu”. What inspired him? The pie was missing two slices and thus resembled a mouth. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the history of Pac-Man and the way in which it changed the world of video games forever.īack in 1979, 27 year old Namco employee Toru Iwatani claims he was staring at a humble pizza when he had an idea for a video game that centered around eating. Evidence of this can be found not only in its initial success, but also by the fact that it continues to be loved and valued by every new generation of gamers. It’s a cultural icon, a symbol of an entire decade, as well as an entity that redefined gaming itself. To call Pac-Man a mere game would be an injustice.
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