Pacman hit the arcades may of 1980.although his design was simple, he became a major icon for generations. Based off of a pizza missing one slice, this dot munching hero is known by almost anyone, gamers and non-gamers alike. In his first game, you played as Pac-Man completing mazes by eating all the dots and avoiding the ghosts. There are these mega dots that give Pac-Man the advantage and lets him eat the ghosts. While the game sounds simple, it’s really challenging. There’s patterns to the ghost’s movements, so if you have it memorized it gets easier. Then, the following year, Ms. Pacman comes out. Ms. Pacman was actually and add on made by college students. They sold the rights to midway and Ms. Pac-Man was born. Ms. Pac-Man has multiple mazes, moving fruit and was an all-round faster game, making it more challenging than Pac-Man. Pac-Man was everywhere! He was in arcades, grocery stores, mini marts, even home television. Yes! That’s right! Pac-Man made his way to the Atari. Atari was so sure that they were going to sell out on the games that they made a whole bunch of copies. Unfortunately, the game flopped. The mazes were different, the dots were replaced with dashes, and Pac-Man looked strange. Then Pac-Man was started being produced by Namco and they released Pac Land in 1984. This was a drastic game changer. It didn’t feature the maze and was a 2D platformer like Mario or sonic. Pac-Man also has his own version of kart racing and party games. He is featured in in fighting games as well such as “Super Smash Bros’ and “Street Fighter x Tekken”.
Pacman has become the most recognized icon. It was “Pac-Man fever” as they were calling it. everyone loved playing the game, it was designed so that women and men alike would like playing it. It’s the simplistic design and bright yellow that people associate with Pac-Man. Of course recent media and game covers show him having legs and arms with boots and gloves. He had a his very own tv show, produced by Hannah Barbara. This gave a lot of opportunities for merchandise; such as lunch boxes, plushies, accessories, candy, sweets, clothing, etc. He became popular that it ended up being his downfall. He was the face of the anti-videogame movement. They had him be the “poster child” because he was an image everyone would know and they wanted Pac-Man to be associated with their movement. The reason behind the movement was because of the popularity Pac-Man had caused. This made more kids go to the arcade and spend all their money and parents got concerned. It was because of this that arcades slowly started disappearing. Despite this, his popularity still grew through home consoles, and eventually having mobile games on cell phones. This kept up his popularity and is why he still an icon in our society.
a little post script:
there were always interpretations for what Pac-Man was. in my opinion i always thought Pac-Man was a guy who wanted a midnight snack but his house was haunted so he has to eat his food before the ghost kill him. however i found this picture that i really loved and i just wanted to share it with you all. c:
there were always interpretations for what Pac-Man was. in my opinion i always thought Pac-Man was a guy who wanted a midnight snack but his house was haunted so he has to eat his food before the ghost kill him. however i found this picture that i really loved and i just wanted to share it with you all. c: