Happy 35th birthday, Pac-Man!
The pellet-muching icon who helped transform gaming into a pop-culture juggernaut is gobbling his way towards middle age. Pac-Man
turns 35 today.
First released in Japan on May 22, 1980, the coin-op classic quickly became a phenomenon, raking in over $1 billion worth of quarters over the decade. He appeared on the cover of Time Magazine. He's adorned cereal boxes, starred in a Saturday morning cartoon, and appeared on virtually every gaming platform to have ever been released.
Credit Pac-Man's popularity to great timing, simple gameplay, and instantly recognizable graphics, but according to creator Toru Iwatani, Pac-Man's widespread appeal was entirely by design.
“The reason I created Pac-Man was because we wanted to attract female gamers,” he said at a 2010 panel on the game. “Back then, there were no home games. People had to go to the arcade center to play games. That was a playground for boys. It was dirty and smelly. So we wanted to include female players, so it would become cleaner and brighter.”
Pac-Man went on to become the world's best-known video game character, beating out even Mario in a 2008 poll. But while you've undoubtedly spent some time racing around a maze with him, you might not know him as well as you think you do. Read on for a few little known Pac-facts.
Over 10 billion served
In the late 90s, Twin Galaxies, an organization that tracks video game world record scores, visited used game auctions and counted how many times the average Pac-Man machine had been played. Multiplying those figures by the total number of machines that were manufactured, they estimated over 10 billion plays in the 20th century.
Ghost protocol
The ghosts that chase Pac-Man around the maze have their own quirks. Blinky, the red ghost, pursues Pac-Man most aggressively and will even speed up slightly after you eat a certain number of dots. Pinky tries to predict where Pac-Man will go and meet him there. The blue ghost, Inky, will continually try to get right in front of Pac-Man, while Clyde, the orange ghost, moves completely at random.
The First Lady
A few years years after Pac-Man stormed arcades, Namco added a bow and lipstick and released Ms. Pac-Man, technically the first playable female character in any video game.
He’s a life saver
Two Swedish airports have installed Ms. Pac-Man machines to help travelers with spare time - and spare change - keep themselves amused between flights. All of the money raised in the machines is donated to the Red Cross and its operations.
A perfect killing machine
There is such a thing as a perfect Pac-Man score. You'll need to eat every dot, fruit, power pellet and ghost on the first 256 levels. At that point, the game crashes to what’s commonly calld the “kill screen” and can’t be played any further. Play it perfectly, and you'll end up with a score of 3,333,360.
Interested in playing it? You can do that for free in a few places. Google honored Pac-Man's 30th birthday with a playable version of the game, and it's still live. If you prefer to play it on a small screen, you can check out Pac-Man Lite, a free iOS version that includes all 256 original levels.
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