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Few video game characters or series have been around longer than the likes of Mario, Donkey Kong, and Sonic. Yet Pac-Man, both the series and character🐷, pre-dates them all. The original gamꦗe was released in arcades all the way back in 1980.
It broke the mold as the title was very different in gameplay and presentation from a lot of others at that time. And the titular creature was one of the first iconic characters in video game history. Over the years, the people behind Pac-Man have revealed a lot about the origins of the ci♏rcular protagonist and his game. Here are all the important parts.
The Idea Behind The Game
In an , Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani claimed that when development for Pac-Man started back in the late 1970s, arcades were often filled with men. In fact, they were almost exclusively male environments. So he wanted to make a game that women would also want to play.
To that end, Iwatani didn't want to include violence in Pac-Man because he felt that would appeal more to men, as . Instead, he decided to make eating the theme of the game, , "my opinion is that the word ‘eat’ is universally appealing and would attract their [women's] attention as well."
It's a bit of a generalization to say that women prefer eating games to violent ones, but that was Iwatani's thinking. Whether or not his exact theory was correct, .
Of course, Pac-Man doesn't just eat. He also moves around a maze and avoids ghosts. Iwatani explained in that the inclusion of the maze was to give players more of an idea of what to do.
Initially, he was just going to have Pac-Man just surrounded by food, but he felt that would make the aim of the game too obscure. With a maze, players know that they have to head through it. He went on to say that the addition of the ghosts was to boost the excitement of the game.
Inspiration For The Characters' Designs
Toru Iwatani has always claimed that he came up with the design for Pac-Man while eating pizza. In an, he said, "I was eating a whole pizza while I was thinking about making a game themed after 'eating.' It was then that I came up with Pac-Man’s game design after looking at the pie with a slice taken from it."
Yet during , he also says part of the design came from the Japanese symbol for mouth (aka Kuchi). The said symbol is a square, but he made it round.
The ghosts, however, were not based on food shapes. He that the idea was to create antagonists who were more cute than scary. This again helped separate Pac-Man from the games that stereotypically appealed to men, which often included fierce�🦄� and terrifying monsters.
For these wholesome ghosts, Iwatani was inspired by the likes of Obake no Q-Taro and Casper The Friendly Ghost. The choice to make them all different colors was once again about appealing to women, as he . The colors also helped represent the ghosts' differing personalities.
The Origins Of The Name
Originally, . Instead, it was called Puckman. This name came from the Japanese phrase Paku paku taberu, which essentially means gobbling up food. As the yellow charact✅er spends the entire game eating things, the title is appropriate.
However, when the game went to the US, there was a clear issue with the name Puckman as vandals could easily convert the "p" to an "f." To avoid that, they changed the name to Pac-Man, and it has be�🍸�en known as that ever since.