Pac Man

I've got the Fever ....

Sure, you play a lot of great games. But how many games spawned a Billboard Top 10 Hit?¹ Videogames were still finding their footing when Pac Man exploded onto the scene. You were no longer shooting down alien invaders (or blasting asteroids) or being mean to anyone. You just wanted a snack and not to get captured (murdered? eaten?) by ghosts.

Oh, sure, from time to time you’ snack on a ghost or two (or all four for big points!) But mostly you were the hunted, not the hunter. The bullied, getting some temporary victories, but always running from defeat.

Another close call! Picture by Bandai Entertainment America (from Wikipedia)

Toru Iwatani envisioned “A video game that appealed to women” and got a game that appealed to … pretty much everyone. Pac Man was not the first game to feature vibrant colors² or cut-scenes³ or music⁴ animations; but it is difficult to think of the first games that did. If you’ve ever played, you can probably name the ghosts easier than most facts you actually need to know.

All of which is to say — Pac Man stood out. And spawned a franchise. If you go on a high end cruise ship, the arcade might very well still have Pac Man (or Ms. Pac man) along with super-VR-insane-pixel-count shooting games that track eye movement. Or you might find it in that elegant “Tabletop” console.

I personally love this form factor — set down a cocktail, play Pac Man.

We live in the world created by Pac Man (and others). It’s a world where Hollywood wishes it made as much money as videogames; but even back then Pac-Man made serious bank. Some estimate that those arcade consoles (~350,000) had 10 Billion Quarters plunked into them over the course of the 20th Century. (Plus the money I spent).

Pac Man showed there was more to the video game market than shooting and sports, and money to be made. Soon enough there were plenty of copy cats, but also a Cambrian explosion of genres. Sure, fighting and sports were still popular, but you also delivered newspapers, served beer, hopped around a color changing pyramid, or navigated a frog across the street.

Pac Man might be the exact moment that arcade games broke out of their niche and exploded into main stream consciousness. How many people were intrigued by Casey Kasem introducing a new song about … an arcade game? You can argue whether the song helped fuel the explosion or merely rode coat-tails, but the explosion was real. Pac Man Fever was everywhere.

The boardgame didn’t help as much as the song. Image by BGG User “Bob Pony”

So, there’s no doubt: Pac Man belongs on the 100 Most Influential Games of the 20th Century.

1. Buckner and Garcia’s follow on song about Donkey Kong didn’t even crack the Top 100!

2. The first color arcade game was in 1973, at least according to this article, but the only game I recognized was Galaxian, but it turns out I was thinking of a different Galaxian, which merits a disambiguation page on wikipedia.

3. Depending on how you define cut scene, Pac Man might be the first, but with a loose enough definition that includes filmed people instead of animation you could find games from ‘73 or even … the early 1900s (reference)

4. I’m not about to debate that can of worms. But face facts: If you were alive and visited arcades in the 80s, you can hum the Pac Man intro and probably some of the music from the animations.