Five Interesting Facts about Pac-Man and How He Affected Full-Sized Arcades

If you’re curious about interesting trivia concerning Pac-Man, whether out of boredom, curiosity, or genuine full-blown interest in the game, then look no further. You’ll be surprised just how much information there is about this mascot that revolutionized the popularity of full-sized arcades that you may be unaware of and yet find interesting. So without any further ado, let’s delve into just what we can learn about this yellow, circular-shaped gaming mascot.

How He Got His Name

Believe it or not, Pac-Man wasn’t even supposed to be this character’s name initially, especially in the concept design of Japan. Pac-Man’s original name was Puck-Man, which would have been pronounced as ‘Paku’ in Japan. This fact is essential because such a translation might describe the sound and action of eating, which is vital if you understand the game’s concept. Sadly such an idea could never come to fruition once Japanese developers realized that in the west, if some malcontents were to change the first letter of Puck-Man to an F, it could leave all sorts of dire implications, especially back in the 80s. So it was decided that Puck-Man would be wisely renamed Pac-Man.

Toru Iwatani

The man who was the lead designer and brains behind the creation of Pac-Man was none other than Toru Iwatani, who came up with the concept and design of the game. He was working for Namco when it was 1979 in which he finally decided to get around to working on the idea of creating Pac-Man. He wanted to focus more on creating a game where eating was the central idea, especially since he felt that it would connect with couples heavily since that was something they often did when going out on dates, especially the women.

Backlash

There’s no denying that Pac-Man was amongst the most popular arcade games, earning itself buckets full of quarters at arcades and other venues through which the game could be featured. Perhaps, however, it became too successful, primarily because it earned the ire of parents and lawmakers alike due to how much time children and teenagers were spending at the arcades on behalf of such a game. It was getting to the point where parents and psychiatrists alike were deriding the game as something that was negatively affecting kids’ mental health country-wide. So great were adults’ hatred for this game that lawmakers made laws against arcades made to target Pac-Man specifically, limiting the hours’ arcades could be open and which venues could even have arcades, to begin with.

The Ghosts

As we know, with all protagonists within video games or, better yet, with video game mascots, you always need a great and recognizable villain or villain to make the hero stand out all the more. In Pac-Man’s case, his antagonists were four ghosts, as everyone may know. You may not know that each of them has names, going by Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde, respectively, with their designs made so that they were approachable yet memorable at the same time for anyone to appreciate. 

Cartoon

Despite parents’ concerns and legal action, Pac-Man’s superstardom could not be stopped, only contained. And even the latter of which was becoming untenable considering that the mascot character got his cartoon show made by none other Hannah Barbera Cartoons, which was a juggernaut back in the day. The cartoon featured Pac-Man and his own family having a slice-of-life-styled comic in which even the ghosts were included and lasted from 1981-1982. Granted, it didn’t last very long, but how many other video game characters can boast of having their cartoon.

Conclusion

Back in the day, Pac-Man was a video game character that was larger than life for its time, considering just how this game managed to become an entity in itself due to such a high degree of popularity. No run-of-the-mill video game mascots have this much of a wealth of information about them listed above, and this is only scratching the surface on just what else we could learn about them. It truly gives a different perspective on just how much Pac-Man affected the industry of full-sized arcades when seeing just how much influence he had on life outside of arcade games. 

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