Today, one of the most popular arcade games in the world celebrates three decades of maze-running, ghost-dodging, pellet-munching action. On this day in 1980, what would become Pac-Man was born, creating a milestone in arcade history. There are only three arcade games on display at the Smithsonian, commemorating the arcade age: Pong, Dragon's Lair, and, of course, our little yellow friend.
The game was created by Toru Iwatani and Shigeo Funaki, with Toshio Kai creating the classic sounds and music (that "Wakka-wakka" sound is all too familiar). It was originally called Puck Man and, surprisingly, didn't do so well in Japan, as Japanese arcade goers were still enamored with games like Taito's Space Invaders. Later that year, Midway got the manufacturing rights for the game in the US, where they changed the name to Pac-Man. Supposedly, this was done because Midway didn't think it was a good idea to give some vandalizing teens a chance to easily change the initial "P" in the name and turn it into Fuck Man (snicker). While Japan weren't interested in a new game concept, American gamers ate up the novel idea and pumped billions of quarters into Pac-Man machines all across the country. Even Iwatani couldn't believe how successful the game was overseas. Eventually, the game's popularity spread to other nations like wildfire and the entire world was suffering from cases of the legendary "Pac-Man Fever."
Fuck Man... I can't stop laughing about that.
Of course, the craze spawned numerous "sequels" and knock-offs. One of these bootleg hacks of Pac-Man turned out to spawn one of the best video game sequels in history. Programmers at the General Computer Corporation created a game called Crazy Otto, which became such a quality knock-off that they presented it to Midway, who changed a few things and performed a "sex change" on the titular character (which pretty much consisted of adding lipstick, eyelashes, and a bow). Thus, Ms. Pac-Man was created, which became an even bigger hit with gamers. It was faster, more complex, than its predecessor. It was so succesful, that General Computer Corporation initiated a legal battle with Midway over royalties. Of course, Namco took notice and told both companies to hand over the entire rights or face a piledriver of a lawsuit for making money on their franchise without their permission. Naturally, Namco now owns Ms. Pac-Man, lock, stock, and barrel, and considers it an official part of the franchise. However, Midway would continue to abuse their agreement with Namco, making more unofficial "sequels," such as Jr. Pac-Man, Baby Pac-Man, and Professor Pac-Man, which caused Namco to retract their licensing agreement with Midway, telling them, "Make one more shitty Pac-Man game, and we'll fucking kill you!" Okay, that quote is only partially true - all of those spin-off games actually did suck.
Cry in fear, children. When you die, Pac-Man
will come to devour your bodiless souls!
Not only did Pac-Man spawn many imitators, it also became a merchandising giant. In the early '80s, Pac-Man was everywhere: t-shirts, wallets, watches, board games, puzzles, stickers, a TV show, even cereal and macaroni and cheese. A very buggy and disappointing console version of Pac-Man came with every Atari 2600 that sold during that time, which meant that everyone had at least two copies of the game (whether they played them is a different story). Pac-Man was also featured in music, as well. Anyone who grew up in that time can probably recall Buckner & Garcia's "Pac-Man Fever" (No, I'm not uploading that song onto this post. If you want to listen to it, go find it yourself), but "Weird Al" Yankovic turned the Beatles' "Tax Man" into, obviously, "Pac-Man," which you won't find on any of his albums, though it was released on Dr. Demento's Basement Tapes.
Since we're on the subject of Pac-Man, we might as well mention one of the arcade world's biggest celebrities. Arcade virtuoso, Billy Mitchell, amongst his many other arcade accomplishments, was the first person to get a perfect game (by getting a score of 3,333,360, which is the maximum amount of points you can get before the game crashes on the 256th level, without losing a single life) in July of 1999.
Despite any real lack of evidence, many people have claimed that they got even higher scores. For instance, In 1982, Ronald Reagan (you know, the US President, at the time) supposedly sent a letter to 8-year-old Jeffrey R. Yee, congratulating him for a world record Pac-Man score of 6,131,940, which is only possible if he got past the "split screen bug" on the aforementioned level (the bug basically causes the entire right half of the screen to display random symbols, making it virtually impossible to continue without hacking the game). People still debate over the authenticity of this claim. Personally, I don't think Reagan would really take the time to set aside Cold War concerns to write some dishonest kid about an accomplishment that has never, ever, been witnessed or reported by any credible source.
Then, there are people who have claimed to be able to get past the dreaded "Split-Screen Level," so, in 1983, the chief scorekeeper from Twin Galaxies, Walter Day, took the National US Video Game Team to find these people and make them put their money where their mouth is. Obviously, no one succeeded. After Billy Mitchell scored his perfect game, he challenged anyone to try to get past that same level, offering $100,000 to anyone who could prove it before the turn of the millennium. Again, no one could accomplish it.
Conclusion: Anyone who claims to get a higher score than 3,333,360 on Pac-Man is full of shit.
Even though others after him have achieved a "perfect game" of Pac-Man,
Billy Mitchell was the first to, officially, accomplish it.
Pac-Man has one of the most storied histories of any video game in the world. To commemorate its history and impact on modern culture, Google paid tribute to the Ghost Gobbler with a special Google logo that, not only looks, but plays like a Pac-Man game. The best part: two-player simultaneous play. All you have to do is hit the "Insert Coin" button twice and, instead of the original Pac-Man music, you'll get Ms. Pac-Man's opening theme. Pac-Man can be controlled with the arrow keys, while Ms. Pac-Man uses the WASD setup (let's see if some of you can control them both at the same time). Seriously, go to Google.com, now, before it's gone. It's a great way to celebrate 30 years of a classic arcade franchise.
Until next time, Happy Birthday, Pac-Man. I'm still older than you.
By the way, I know I'm running late on my 6th day Dio tribute on the Ablogcalypse. I had a hard time sleeping last night and slept a good amount of the day. I'll get it up real soon.
(snicker) Fuck Man... That will never get old.
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