Pac-Man, the Video Game by Namco

Type of the machine : Video Game
Pac-Man © 1980 Namco.

Pac-Man is the seminal and hugely influential arcade game in which the player guides the legendary Pac-Man around a single-screen maze eating dots. Pac-Man is constantly pursued in his task by four ghosts - Blinky (red), Pinky (pink), Inky (cyan) and Clyde (orange). Each ghost has its own unique personality and behavioral patterns and a single touch from any of the ghosts results in Pac-Man losing a life. The number of lives Pac-Man starts with depends on the 'Lives' dip switch setting (1, 2, 3, or 5; the default is 3). When all of Pac-Man's lives are lost, the game is over.

Power pills are situated in each corner of the rectangular mazes and eating one of these makes Pac-Man temporarily invincible; the four ghosts also change to dark blue in color and can now be eaten by Pac-Man. These 'skinned' ghosts, now visible as a pair of eyes only, will then return to the ghost pen in the middle of the maze, regenerate into their former selves, and return to the maze to continue their pursuit of Pac-Man.

Each maze contains 240 dots and 4 power pills, and all must be eaten to complete the level; whereupon the entire sequence begins again with an increased level of difficulty.

Twice in every level, a bonus fruit or prize item will temporarily appear in the middle of the maze below the ghost pen. Pac-Man can eat these bonus items to receive extra points. Also, there is an escape tunnel each side of the maze that Pac-Man can use to escape any ghosts that are currently closing in on him. The ghosts can also use the tunnel, but take longer to pass through it than Pac-Man, making escape a little easier.

Between certain rounds, funny intermissions will be played featuring Pac-Man and the ghosts in funny situations. 3 intermissions are present :
1) Blinky chases Pac-Man across the screen and off the side. Then he re-appears running in the opposite direction, having turned blue, followed by a giant Pac-Man! This intermission is played after Round 2.
2) Blinky is again chasing Pac-Man, but this time he rips his red sheet on a nail on the ground, and we can see his pink body under the sheet! This intermission is played after Round 5.
3) Blinky chases Pac-Man across the screen once more, this time with his sheet sewn. They disappear at the left side and then Blinky reappears coming back the opposite direction. This time he is bare and drags his sheet behind him. This intermission is played after Rounds 9, 13 and 17.

No intermission is present between rounds after the 18th one.

Main CPU : Z80 (@ 3.072 Mhz)
Sound Chips : Namco 3-channel WSG

Screen orientation : Vertical
Video resolution : 224 x 288 pixels
Screen refresh : 60.61 Hz
Palette colors : 16

Players : 2
Control : 4-way joystick

Released in October 1980.

Licensed to Midway for U.S. manufacture and distribution. 96000 units were produced in the U.S.

Pac-Man was first introduced to the arcades at the end of 1980 and immediately captured the hearts and imaginations of the public like no other game before it, and few since. It is still regarded as the hallmark of the 'golden age' of video games.

Toru Iwatani, author of Pac-Man : Pac Man's character is difficult to explain even to the Japanese -- he is an innocent character. He hasn't been educated to discern between good and evil. He acts more like a small child than a grown-up person. Think of him as a child learning in the course of his daily activities. If someone tells him guns are evil, he would be the type to rush out and eat guns. But he would most probably eat any gun, even the pistols of policemen who need them.

Developed by Namco, the original Japanese release was called "Puckman" but, due to the West's predilection with changing words to vulgarities by scratching part of the word off (in this case, changing the word 'Puck' to something rather less socially acceptable by scratching off part of the letter 'P'), was changed to 'Pac-Man'. The name Pac-Man is derived from the Japanese slang term 'paku-paku', which describes the motion of the mouth opening and closing during eating and translates in English as 'to eat'.

In Brazil, the game was unofficially named by the children as 'Come-Come' (lit. he eats-he eats, in Portuguese). Also an onomatopoeic, from the sound the character does when walking/eating. In Italy, the same sound is referred as a meaningless 'Gabo Gabo'. In Spain it was called 'Comecocos' (coconut-eater).

Pac-Man was, quite literally, conceived at lunchtime. The game's designer, the then twenty-six year old Toru Iwatani, was very hungry and ordered himself a pizza for lunch. He took one slice, and, looking at the rest of the pizza, Pac-Man was born. However, in later years Iwatani has suggested the shape was based on the Japanese character 'kuchi', meaning mouth. He rounded off this shape, and created the classic shape. The game took 1 1/2 years to complete and had five people on its team. Pac-Man is the greatest selling arcade game of all time and is arguably also the world's most recognized video-game character of all time. It had its own cartoon, lunch box, board game, stickers and hundreds of other products. This was largely due to Pac-Man being the first truly distinctive video-game 'character', and it changed the face of video games forever. Pac-Man was also the first video game to be as equally popular with women as it was with men. Pac-Man's cult status in the early 80s was such that it even inspired a hit song by 'Buckner and Garcia' called 'Pac-Man Fever', released on the album of the same name.

* A place in video game history : 'Pac-Man is the most universally known arcade game', said Chris Lindsey, director of the National Video Game and Coin-Op Museum in St. Louis. 'Everybody knows about Pac-Man. And, I've noticed, almost everybody can play Pac-Man pretty well. Pac-Man makes just about the best use of the joystick one can imagine. It's so intuitive that it puts other games to shame in terms of how easy it is for a person to walk up, stick a quarter in the machine, and start doing something meaningful. At the time, Pac-Man introduced a completely unique style of game play and was also highly identifiable in terms of its music. With Pac-Man, everything was there. The video game industry needs another game that captures the public's heart like Pac-Man, and so far, no one has been able to come up with it.'.

* The great 25-cent escape : Lindsey says, 'People expect to see Pac-Man when they come into the museum, and without fail, when they see it, they want to play it; people remember spending hours and hours at Pac-Man. They like to see how good they are now when they play it. And I would say that, perhaps more than any other game, the same playing skills still apply. Perhaps it's because of the intuitive game play. You don't have to memorize the behavior of a wide array of enemies as you do with some other games.'.
You just have to remember that when the ghosts turn blue, you only have seconds, until they start seriously blinking, to go and get them. And Pac-Man is a little looser in its style of game play - more open. For instance, you can kill time in the lower left hand corner until you see an opening between the ghosts, and you can strategize a bit more : You can play with the tunnels, you can play with the position of the ghosts in relation to the energizers. Even people who haven't played in years remember those strategies.
You can also get into some really fun jams, Lindsey continues : 'When you've got a ghost on your tail and you have to make a decision about whether you're going to go left, or right, or straight at the next junction, which is in .03 seconds. It gets to be pretty tense, especially when those ghosts start moving really fast and the energizers aren't lasting as long. Pac-Man can be a real heart-thumping game.'.

After the 255th level, Pac-man presents the player with the infamous 'split-screen' level, where the left-half of the screen is normal, but the right-half of the screen is garbled with a mess of letters, numbers, symbols and other graphics. This level cannot be completed because there are not enough dots on screen to be eaten! This is the result of a bug in the routine drawing the fruits at the bottom of the screen, according to the round number. Indeed, the code works as follows:
1) it increases the last round number by one;
2) it checks if the result is smaller than 8 (in this case, you still would not have enough fruits to fill the line and some blank space must be drawn);
3) it checks if the result is larger than 19 (in this case, it has only to draw keys);
4) finally, it fills the bottom bar with the correct fruits.
In particular, if the round number is smaller than 8, the game draws as many fruits as the previous round number. This produces an undesirable effect right after the 255th level.
Indeed, 256 = 255+1 becomes 00 for the CPU (which expects to use the last 2 hexadecimal digits only, and 256 = 100 in hex)!
Therefore, the game thinks to be in one of the first 7 levels (because 0 is smaller than 7), but it tries to draw 255 fruits (because the last round number was 255). Of course, there is no space for that many fruits to be displayed and the game starts to draw garbage on the main screen.
Fixing the original code (either through a cheat in emulation, or hacking the roms on the PCB) would results in a 256th level identical to the first one (cherries will appear) but harder, since ghosts will behave as they do in levels beyond the 19th.

The alien spaceship "Galaxian" makes an appearance as the prize in the 9th and 10th boards.

Reportedly, when Bally/Midway obtained the rights to Pac-Man, Namco was offering four different games, which ended up being licensed to Game Plan and Bally/Midway. Game Plan's Ken Anderson reports that he and Bally's Dave Marofske flipped a coin to see who would get first crack at the games. Game Plan won and chose a tank game (which they released as "Tank Battalion") over Pac-Man. The other game they got was released as "King & Balloon". Bally/Midway, meanwhile, took Pac-Man and "Rally X".

The game also spawned a virtual cottage industry of best-selling how-to books strategy guides on how to beat the game by using patterns with names like the "Bazo's Breaker", the "Donut Dazzler" and the "GET pattern" (named after the first initials of the members of a team of players from Davis, California: George Huang, Ed Bazo, and Tom Fertado).

Note : Excluding bootlegs, there are 23 different name/nickname combinations for the ghosts in Pac-Man (27 including 'Sue' from "Ms. Pac-Man", 'Tim' from "Jr. Pac-Man", and 'Funky' and 'Spunky', both from "Pac-Mania").

'Galaxian' boards will run in Pac-Man machines, but the sound pinout is different, so the pinout at the connector would have to be modified. To fire, one would have to press UP on the joystick.

Billy Mitchell, Rick Fothergill, Chris Ayra, Tim Balderramos and Donald Hayes all hold the official record for this game on 'Regular (TGTS)' settings with a perfect score of 3333360 points on July 3, 1999, July 31, 1999, February 16, 2000, December 4, 2004 and July 21, 2005, also, respectively.
Chris Ayra holds the official record for the fastest time to get a perfect game on 'Regular' settings with 3:42:05 on April 2, 2002.
Ron Corcoran holds the official record for this game on 'Speedup' settings with 1321020 points on May 13, 2001.

Hacks of this game are known as "Hangly Man" and "Caterpillar".

A Pac-Man unit appears in the movie 'Getting There', in the 1982 movie 'Jekyll & Hyde - Together Again', in the 1982 movie 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High', in the 1983 movie 'WarGames', in the 1983 movie 'Joysticks', in the 1983 movie 'Koyaanisqatsi - Life out of Balance', in the 1985 movie 'The Heavenly Kid', in the 1985 movie 'Better Off Dead', and in the 1986 movie 'The colour of Money'.

A Pac-man unit appears in the pilot of Season One of the A-Team. It is where Amy meets Murdock for the first time

MB (Milton Bradley) released a board game based on this video game in 1982 (Pac-Man Game, 'As Much Fun as the Action Packed Arcade Game of the Same Name'). In this board game, the dots in the maze are represented by white marbles. There are also yellow marbles representing the power pills in the maze. There are also two ghosts pawns of the same color in the game. The object is to roll the dice and move your Pac-Man playing piece around the maze gobbling up as many marbles as you can using the count on one die, and move either ghost pawn using the count on the other die. There are yellow dots imprinted on the game board to lay out the path each character must take; these dots do not count as spaces. Use the ghosts to try to catch your opponents. When this happens, that opponent is sent back home and surrenders two marbles to the player who moved the ghost. If a Pac-Man gobbles up a yellow marble, that player earns the right to gobble a ghost. When this happens, the gobbled ghost is returned to the ghost pen, the player takes two marbles away from any opponent, and the player's yellow marble is returned to the gameboard. Once the maze is cleared of white marbles, the game is over and the player with the most white marbles (yellow marbles do not count) is the winner.

'Pac-man' is also the nickname of the Filipino boxing champion Manny Pacquiao. The two-time world champion earned the distinction as the only boxer who has knocked down both future Mexican 'Hall of Famer' Marco Antonio 'Baby Face Assassin' Barrera (knocked out in 11th round)and Erik 'El Terrible' Morales (knocked out in 10th round). Pacquiao has been on the top 10 list of the best 'pound-for-pound' fighters in the world.

In the multi-racial country of Malaysia, 'Pac-Man' is a slang coined to describe men who only date ladies of other races.

The name 'Pac-man' has been given to a nebula, cataloged as NGC 281. The Pac-man Nebula is an H II region in the constellation of Cassiopeia. It includes or is near the open cluster IC 1590, the double star HD 5005, and several Bok globules. The shape of the nebula resembles the famous video game icon, Pac-Man. It is visible in amateur telescopes from dark sky locations.

As mentioned earlier, Pac-Man's ghosts have names and nicknames which are : Shadow (Blinky), Speedy (Pinky), Bashful (Inky), and Pokey (Clyde). The are red, pink, cyan, and orange in color, respectively. In the original "Puckman", the ghosts were named Oikake (Akabei), Machibuse (Pinky), Kimagure (Aosuke), and Otoboke (Guzuta). Puckman also had a dip switch for alternate ghost names : Urchin (Macky), Romp (Micky), Stylist (Mucky), and Crybaby (Mocky).

Midway's new revision program for Pac-Man was released in December 1981, the new program increases the difficulty of the game and adds a new challenge to players already familiar with the original.

The Bootleg version on the 'Galaxian' hardware has different colors and screen proportions. Credit, Level & Lives remaining are incorporated in the Maze section (look at the middle exits). The sound is also quite a bit different. In addition, the ghosts are introduced by Puckman's 'Alternate' ghost names, and there is no dip switch for ghost names.

Dot : 10 points.
Power pill (energizer) : 50 points.
Ghosts : 200, 400, 800, 1600 points.
Cherry : 100 points.
Strawberry : 300 points.
Peach : 500 points.
Apple : 700 points.
Pineapple : 1000 points.
Galaxian : 2000 points.
Bell : 3000 points.
Key : 5000 points.

* An extra life is awarded based on the 'Extra Lives' dip switch setting (10000, 15000, 20000, or None; the default is 10000).

* Fruits appear twice on each board. The first fruit appears after Pac-Man has eaten 70 dots; the second fruit appears after 170 dots have been eaten by Pac-Man.

* At the beginning of a round, the ghosts won't immediately pursue Pac-Man. Use this time the best as you can.

* Pac-Man can turn corners faster than the ghosts can, so turning many corners can help you escape ghosts.

* The tunnel allows Pac-Man and the ghosts to instantly travel from one side of the maze to the other. While traveling through the maze, Pac-Man moves at normal speed, but the ghosts' speed is reduced in half. This provides Pac-Man with a good opportunity to put some distance between him and his pursuers, but be careful not to get trapped by another ghost entering the opposite side.

* If you hold the joystick in a direction that is blocked by a wall, Pac-Man will turn in that direction as soon as he reaches a passage leading in that direction. Remember this to turn corners as fast as you can.

* Remember that eating dots will slow Pac-Man a little bit: avoid parts of the maze in which you've not been yet if you are trying to escape ghosts!

* Mind that, as the levels increases, the ghost speed increases as well!

* In later rounds, you're not going to be able to eat ghosts after eating an energizer, because the vulnerability time decreases to zero. This is when you need to learn how to avoid the ghosts understanding their movement and their moving patterns!

* Right above the ghost pen, there are two paths leading upward to upper part of the maze. The ghosts never travel upward through these holes while they're in their normal forms; they only do while they're blue after Pac-Man has eaten an energizer! Indeed, they only exit the area around the ghost pen from the sides or the bottom. These are not completely safe corners, since ghosts can travel downward through them, anyway they often represents a safe passage to flee from ghosts pursuing you around the ghost pen.

* Ghosts' Movements : First of all, remember that ghosts are not always following you! Their movements follow two distinct phases: one in which they avoid Pac-Man and one in which they hunt him down. In the former phase, each ghost patrols his personal corner of the maze. In the latter one, they will try to find Pac-Man, following their personal 'behavior'. Namely :
1) Blinky (Red ghost): he tends to patrol the top-right corner of the maze and he follows Pac-Man always trying to minimize their respective distance;
2) Pinky (Pink ghost): he tends to patrol the top-left corner of the maze and he follows Pac-Man trying to reach a position slightly in front of Pac-Man, in the direction he's moving;
3) Clyde (Orange ghost): he tends to patrol the bottom-left corner of the maze and he only tries to be close to Pac-Man, without hunting him directly;
4) Inky (Cyan ghost): he tends to patrol the bottom-right corner of the maze and he has the most complicated AI since he moves towards a point determined by both Pac-Man's position and Blinky's position.

Ghosts alternate these two different behaviors (hiding and hunting) a few times in each round, then they start to pursue Pac-Man restlessly until all the dots are eaten, or they manage to catch him.
Additionally, as soon as a certain number of dots has been cleared from the maze (this number decreases as the levels pass), Blinky's speed will increase and he won't stop to search for Pac-Man anymore.

* Easter egg :
1) Enter service mode.
2) Press and hold the 1P and 2P buttons and toggle service mode off and on quickly to bring up the alignment grid.
3) Enter the sequence: Up(x4), Left(x4), Right(x4), Down(x4).
4) MADE BY NAMCO will appear sideways in red.

1. Pac-Man (1980)
2. Ms. Pac-Man (1981)
3. Super Pac-Man (1982)
4. Pac-Man Plus (1982)
5. Jr. Pac-Man (1983)
6. Pac & Pal (1983)
7. Pac-Land (1984)
8. Pac-Mania (1987)
9. Pac-In-Time (1994, Nintendo Super Famicom)
10. Pac-Man 2 - The New Adventures (1994, Nintendo Super Famicom and Sega Mega Drive)
11. Pac-Man VR (1996)
12. Pac-Man World (1999, Sony PlayStation)
13. Pac-Man - Adventures in Time (2000, PC CD-ROM)
14. Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness (2000, Sony PlayStation)
15. Ms. Pac-Man - Quest for the Golden Maze (2001, PC CD-ROM)
16. Pac-Man All-Stars (2002, PC CD-ROM)
17. Pac-Man Fever (2002, Sony PlayStation 2)
18. Pac-Man World 2 (2002, Sony PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, and Microsoft XBOX; 2004, PC CD-ROM)
19. Pac-Man vs. (2003, Nintendo GameCube)
20. Ms. Pac-Man - Maze Madness (2004, Nintendo GameBoy Advance)
21. Pac-Man World 3 (2005, Sony PSP, Sony PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, Microsoft XBOX, PC CD-ROM, and Nintendo DS)
22. Pac'n Roll (2005, Nintendo DS)
23. Pac-Pix (2005, Nintendo DS)

Designed by : Toru Iwatani
Programmed by : Hideyuki Mokajima
Music & Sound by : Toshio Kai

Consoles :

Bally Astrocade ("Muncher")
Atari 2600 (1981)
Atari 5200 (1982)
Colecovision (1983)
Mattel Intellivision (1983)
Emerson Arcadia ("Gobbler")
Atari XEGS
Nintendo Famicom (1987)
Nintendo Famicom Disk (1990)
Sega Game Gear (1990)
SNK Neo-Geo Pocket (1990)
Nintendo Game Boy (1991)
Sony PlayStation (1995, "Namco Museum Vol.1")
Nintendo Game Boy Color (1999, "Pac-Man - Special Color Edition")
Nintendo 64 (1999, "Namco Museum 64")
Sega Dreamcast (1999, "Namco Museum")
Nintendo Game Boy Advance (2001, "Pac-Man Collection")
Sony PlayStation 2 (2001, "Namco Museum")
Nintendo GameCube (2002, "Namco Museum")
Microsoft XBOX (2002, "Namco Museum")
Nintendo Game Boy Advance (2004, Famicom Mini Series)
Sony PlayStation 2 (2005, "Namco Museum 50th Anniversary")
Microsoft XBOX (2005, "Namco Museum 50th Anniversary")
Nintendo GameCube (2005, "Namco Museum 50th Anniversary")
Nintendo Game Boy Advance (2005, "Namco Museum 50th Anniversary")
Sony PSP (2005, "Namco Museum Battle Collection") : a brand new 'Arrangement' version unique to this port is also featured.
Microsoft XBOX 360 (2006, as a downloadable Live Arcade game)
Microsoft XBOX 360 (2007, "Pac-Man Championship Edition" Xbox Live Arcade)
Nintendo DS (2007, "Namco Museum DS")
Sony PlayStation 3 (2009, "Namco Museum Essentials")

Computers :

Exidy Sorcerer (1981, "Chomp")
Tandy Color Computer (1981, "Pac-Tac")
Tandy Color Computer (1982, "Ghost Gobbler")
Tandy Color Computer (1982, "Pack Maze")
Atari 400 (1982)
Atari 800 (1982)
PC [Booter] (1982, "PC-Man)
Commodore VIC-20 (1982)
BBC B (1982, Acornsoft): Renamed "Snapper" after Acornsoft was sued.
Commodore C64 (1983)
Tandy Color Computer (1983, "Pac-Tac II")
Tandy Color Computer (1983, "Pac Jaws")
PC [Booter] (1983)
PC [Booter] (1983, "Ascii Man", a part of the "Friendlyware PC Arcade" suite)
PC [MS-DOS] (1983)
Texas Instruments TI-99/4A (1983)
Fujitsu FM-7 (1984)
Acorn Electron (1984, "Snapper")
MSX (1984)
Amstrad CPC (1985)
Thomson TO8 (1986, "Compilation Contacthoms")
Atari ST (1986, "Spook - Mighty Munchers")
Tandy Color Computer (1990, "Pac-Dude")
Apple Macintosh (1992, "Mac-Man")
PC [MS Windows 95] (1995, "Mac-Man", part of "Windows Arcade Pack")
PC [MS Windows 95, 3.5''](1995, "Microsoft Return of Arcade")
Tandy Color Computer 3 (1997)
PC [MS-DOS] (1997, "ChampPac-Em" - CHAMProgramming)
PC [MS Windows, CD-ROM] (2000, "Microsoft Return of Arcade 20th Anniversary")
PC [MS Windows, CD-ROM] (2005, "Namco Museum 50th Anniversary")
Sinclair ZX Spectrum
Apple II
Sharp X68000
PC9801 ("Wiz")

Others :

VFD portable game (1980, "Pac-Man 2", called Pac Man 2 because it allowed two people to play at once) by Entex.
VFD portable game (1980, "Hungry Pac", Japanese release only) by Entex.
VFD handheld game (1981) by Coleco.
LCD flip-type handheld game (1984) by Tiger (Released overseas by Orlitronic).
LCD large screen handheld game (1984) by Tiger (Released overseas by Orlitronic).
LCD handheld game (1992) released by MGA (Micro Games of America).
Arcade (1996, "Namco Classics Collection Vol.2")
LCD handheld color game (1999) released by MGA (Micro Games of America).
Mobile Phones (2003)
Namco Classics TV game (2003 - Jakks Pacific).
Super Pac-Man TV game (2006 - Jakks Pacific).
Apple I Pod (2006)
Arcade Gold featuring Pac-Man (2007 - Jakks Pacific).
Retro Arcade featuring Pac-Man (2008 - Jakks Pacific).

Game's rom.
Machine's picture.
All In Color For a Quarter - Keith Smith
All In Color For a Quarter - Keith Smith
Mark Longridge, Scott Lawrence and Don Hodges webpages, for the analysis of the 256th level bug.