His game was initially called Pakkuman, based on the Japanese onomatopoeia term “paku paku taberu”, referencing the mouth movement of opening and closing in succession. Iwatani began thinking of things that women liked to do in their time he decided to center his game around eating, basing this on women liking to eat desserts and other sweets. For his next project, Iwatani chose to create a non-violent, cheerful video game that appealed mostly to women, as he believed that attracting women and couples into arcades would potentially make them appear to be much-more family friendly in tone. Iwatani felt that arcade games only appealed to men for their crude graphics and violence, and that arcades in general were seen as seedy environments. The Japanese video game industry had surged in popularity with games such as Space Invaders and Breakout, which led to the market being flooded with similar titles from other manufacturers in an attempt to cash in on the success. He also assisted in the production of two sequels, Bomb Bee and Cutie Q, both released in 1979 He created Namco's first video game Gee Bee in 1978, which while unsuccessful helped the company gain a stronger foothold in the quickly-growing video game industry. Company president Masaya Nakamura created a small video game development group within the company and ordered them to study several NEC-produced microcomputers to potentially create new games with.One of the first people assigned to this division was a young 24-year-old employee named Toru Iwatani. The game becomes unplayable at the 256th level due to an integer overflow that affects the game's memory.Īfter acquiring the struggling Japanese division of Atari in 1974, video game developer Namco began producing its own video games in-house, as opposed to simply licensing them from other developers and distributing them in Japan. In-between levels are short cutscenes featuring Pac-Man and Blinky in humorous, comical situations. Levels are indicated by the fruit icon at the bottom of the screen. Ghosts become slower when entering and exiting these tunnels. To the sides of the maze are two 'warp tunnels', which allow Pac-Man and the ghosts to travel to the opposite side of the screen.

The game increases in difficulty as the player progresses the ghosts become faster and the energizers' effect decreases in duration to the point where the ghosts will no longer turn blue and edible. Eating a certain number of dots in a level will cause a bonus item - usually in the form of a fruit – to appear underneath the center box, which can be eaten for bonus points. After a certain amount of time, blue-colored ghosts will flash white before turning back into their normal, lethal form. Eating multiple blue ghosts in succession increases their point value. Pac-Man can eat blue ghosts for bonus points when eaten, their eyes make their way back to the center box in the maze, where the ghosts 'regenerate' and resume their normal activity. Eating these will cause the ghosts to turn blue with a dizzied expression and reverse direction. Placed at the four corners of the maze are large flashing 'energizers', or 'power pellets'. Each of the four ghosts have their own unique, distinct artificial intelligence (A.I.), or 'personalities' Blinky gives direct chase to Pac-Man, Pinky and Inky try to position themselves in front of Pac-Man, usually by cornering him, and Clyde will switch between chasing Pac-Man and fleeing from him. If Pac-Man makes contact with a ghost, he will lose a life the game ends when all lives are lost. When Pac-Man eats all of the dots, the player advances to the next level. The objective of the game is to eat all of the dots placed in the maze while avoiding four colored ghosts - Blinky (red), Pinky (pink), Inky (cyan), and Clyde (orange) - that pursue him. Pac-Man is an action maze chase video game the player controls the eponymous character through an enclosed maze.

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