44 Fun Facts About Pac-Man

In which year was Pac-Man first released in Japan?

Pac-Man debuted in 1980: it was location-tested in a Shibuya, Tokyo arcade on May 22, 1980, and reached North American arcades later that same year.

Under what title was Pac-Man originally released in Japan?

The Japanese title was Puck Man, from paku paku taberu, an onomatopoeic phrase for gobbling food; the name became Pac-Man for the North American release.

Who designed Pac-Man, leading a nine-man team at Namco?

Toru Iwatani designed Pac-Man; he had joined Namco hoping to build pinball machines and instead created the company's first video game, Gee Bee, in 1978.

Which audience did the designer specifically set out to attract with a cute, non-violent game?

The designer aimed Pac-Man at women, seeing arcades as seedy places full of war and sports games, and hoped couples would make them more welcoming.

The shape of the Pac-Man character is famously said to have been inspired by what?

The designer said the shape came from a pizza with a slice missing, though he later admitted he also rounded off the Japanese character for mouth, kuchi.

Which ghost is orange?

Clyde switches between chasing Pac-Man and running away depending on how close he gets.

Which ghost gives direct chase to Pac-Man rather than trying to cut him off?

Blinky, the red one, also stars alongside Pac-Man in the comic cutscenes between levels.

Namco's president originally wanted all four ghosts to be what?

Company president Masaya Nakamura wanted all the ghosts to be the same shade of red; the designer argued for different colours and his colleagues backed him unanimously in a vote.

What happens when Pac-Man eats one of the large flashing pellets in the corners of the maze?

Eating several blue ghosts in a row raises their point value each time, and their eyes float back to the centre box to regenerate.

Why were ghosts chosen as the game's enemies?

The designer had already tried cute characters in Cutie Q the year before, and gave the ghosts big expressive blue eyes.

How did the designer convey the munching sound effect he wanted to composer Toshio Kai?

The sound effects were among the last things added to the game.

Which Namco game briefly outsold Pac-Man in Japan because its male players preferred shooting?

Galaxian, Namco's 1979 shooter, briefly outsold Pac-Man in Japan because the mostly male arcade crowd preferred shooting games; Pac-Man soon overtook it on its way to global success.

Roughly how many Pac-Man arcade cabinets had been sold by 1982?

About 400,000 Pac-Man cabinets had been sold worldwide by 1982; Guinness separately recognised 293,822 machines installed between 1981 and 1987 as the most for any coin-operated game.

An integer overflow makes which Pac-Man stage impossible, producing the kill screen?

Level 256 is the kill screen: an 8-bit counter overflows, the right half of the maze becomes a garbled mess of symbols, and too few dots remain to finish it.

What is a perfect score on the original arcade Pac-Man?

A perfect score is 3,333,360: every dot, energiser, fruit and blue ghost eaten on all 255 levels without losing a life, plus the hidden dots on the broken final level.

Who was the first person to achieve a publicly verified perfect Pac-Man score, in July 1999?

Billy Mitchell recorded the first verified perfect game on July 3, 1999, at Funspot in New Hampshire; Twin Galaxies struck his records in 2018, and Guinness reinstated them in 2020.

Which US president wrote to Jeffrey Yee in 1982 congratulating him on an impossible Pac-Man score?

Ronald Reagan's letter praised a claimed 6,131,940 points, a total that would require clearing the game's unbeatable final level, something no player has ever demonstrated.

Ms. Pac-Man began life as an unlicensed enhancement kit for Pac-Man under what name?

Crazy Otto was the kit's working title; after an Atari lawsuit barred its MIT-bred makers from selling conversion kits without permission, they offered it to Pac-Man's US distributor, who released it as Ms. Pac-Man.

In Ms. Pac-Man the orange ghost is renamed what?

The orange ghost became Sue in Ms. Pac-Man; in 1987's Pac-Mania she was recoloured purple so she could be told apart from her orange predecessor.

How many different mazes does Ms. Pac-Man have?

Ms. Pac-Man has four mazes, rotating through pink, light blue, brown and dark blue colour schemes; its ghosts also move semi-randomly, so memorised patterns no longer work.

Which company developed Ms. Pac-Man, making it the first game in the series not made by Namco?

General Computer Corporation, founded by MIT students, built Ms. Pac-Man; it had earlier sold Super Missile Attack, a speed-up kit for Missile Command, which drew an Atari lawsuit.

Which duo had a top-ten US hit in 1982 with the novelty song "Pac-Man Fever"?

Buckner & Garcia took 'Pac-Man Fever' to No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1982; they wrote it after discovering the game in a Marietta, Georgia restaurant.

Which network aired Hanna-Barbera's Pac-Man cartoon, the first ever based on a video game, from 1982?

ABC aired Hanna-Barbera's Pac-Man on Saturday mornings from September 1982, making it the first TV cartoon based on a video game; it ran for two seasons.

In the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, what is the name of Pac-Man's wife?

Pac-Man's wife is called Pepper in the cartoon; the family also includes Pac-Baby, a dog called Chomp-Chomp and a cat called Sour Puss.

Who programmed the notorious 1982 Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man?

Tod Frye programmed the Atari 2600 port, earning a royalty on every cartridge sold; the game, squeezed into a 4 KB ROM, is routinely cited as one of the worst arcade conversions ever made.

What are the dots called in the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man?

The manual calls the dots video wafers and the energisers power pills; the bonus item is an orange rectangle called the vitamin, and the ghosts flicker because only one is drawn per frame.

A "National Pac-Man Day" was declared on April 3, 1982 to promote what?

Atari staged the day to launch its Atari 2600 cartridge of Pac-Man, which it had manufactured in enormous quantities; despite poor reviews it became the console's best-selling title.

Which Nintendo designer created Pac-Man Vs. for GameCube as a GBA link cable demo?

Shigeru Miyamoto devised Pac-Man Vs. in 2003 to show off GameCube-GBA connectivity: one player steers Pac-Man on the Game Boy Advance screen while up to three others chase him as ghosts on the TV.

Which 2007 Xbox 360 game was the last one the original designer of Pac-Man worked on?

Its split mazes and time limit reinvented the formula, and it was praised as the first true successor to the original.

Which 2015 endless runner by the Crossy Road studio marked Pac-Man's 35th anniversary?

Pac-Man 256, made by Hipster Whale for the 35th anniversary, turns the arcade game's kill-screen glitch into a wall of corruption that chases you up an endless maze.

For which anniversary did Google turn its homepage logo into a playable Pac-Man game in May 2010?

Google's doodle on May 21, 2010 marked Pac-Man's 30th anniversary; it was the first playable doodle, and Google later gave it a permanent page of its own.

Which New York institution added Pac-Man to its permanent collection in 2012?

The Museum of Modern Art announced in November 2012 that it had acquired 14 video games, Pac-Man among them alongside Tetris, Myst and The Sims, for its design collection.

In business jargon, what is a "Pac-Man defense"?

The image is Pac-Man eating an energiser and turning on the ghosts that were chasing him.

Which NFL cornerback, a 2005 first-round pick, is nicknamed Pacman?

Adam Jones, drafted sixth overall by the Tennessee Titans in 2005, has carried the nickname Pacman since childhood, reportedly for the way he gulped milk as a baby.

Which 2015 Adam Sandler film has Pac-Man attacking a city, with its designer in a cameo?

In Pixels, Denis Akiyama plays Pac-Man's creator, who pleads with a giant rogue Pac-Man, while the real designer appears briefly as an arcade technician.

Which 1984 Namco side-scroller based on the cartoon paved the way for Super Mario Bros.?

Pac-Land, released in 1984, adopted the cartoon's character designs and was later cited as an influence on Super Mario Bros.; its buttons-only controls were borrowed from Konami's Track & Field.

Which Nintendo fighting series has featured Pac-Man as a playable guest since its fourth instalment?

Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, the series' fourth instalment, added Pac-Man in 2014 as a third-party guest; he returned in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Which 2011 arcade game had four players compete as coloured Pac-Men to be the last one standing?

Pac-Man Battle Royale lets up to four players, each a differently coloured Pac-Man, eat one another after grabbing power pellets; Raw Thrills released a Chompionship edition in 2021.

Which channel aired Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures from 2013 to 2015?

Disney XD carried Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures in the US from June 2013; in it Pac-Man attends Maze High School and the ghosts are his allies against the villain Betrayus.

Which company did Namco merge with in 2005 to form the group that owns Pac-Man?

The Namco name lives on for arcades, while the games division became Bandai Namco Entertainment.

Roughly how long did Pac-Man take to develop, then the longest for any video game?

Development took one year and five months, beginning in early 1979, then the longest for any video game; the nine-strong team included composer Toshio Kai and programmer Shigeo Funaki.

Which 1979 Atari game did Pac-Man overtake as the best-selling arcade game in the US?

Asteroids, Atari's 1979 vector shooter, was the US arcade sales leader until Pac-Man overtook it; Pac-Man went on to gross more than $1 billion in quarters, outgrossing the film Star Wars.

Roughly how many copies did the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man sell?

That made it the console's best-selling title despite its poor reputation.

Which processor powered the original Pac-Man arcade board?

The board is driven by a Zilog Z80A clocked at 3.072 MHz, with sound from Namco's custom three-channel waveform generator; the monitor is mounted rotated 90 degrees.