50 Fun Facts About Pac-Man

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

Location testing began in Shibuya on May 22, 1980, and the game reached North America that August.

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

The name comes from paku paku taberu, a Japanese phrase for gobbling something up.

Why was the game's title changed for its North American release?

Midway also had the cabinet art redrawn before showing the game to US distributors.

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

He originally wanted to make pinball machines but was steered into video games, creating Namco's first, Gee Bee, in 1978.

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

He felt arcades were 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 later admitted that was only partly true and that he also rounded off the Japanese character for mouth, kuchi.

What are the names of the four ghosts in the original arcade game?

Each has its own personality: one chases you directly, two try to get in front of you, and one dithers between chasing and fleeing.

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?

The designer argued for different colours and his colleagues backed him unanimously.

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.

The idea for the bonus fruit that appears under the centre box came from graphics on what?

The fruit also serves as the level counter along the bottom of the screen.

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 US company distributed Pac-Man in North America after Atari turned it down?

Midway initially built just 5,000 cabinets, and Namco's executives had expected Rally-X to be the bigger hit.

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

Pac-Man still ended up as Japan's highest-grossing arcade game of 1980, dethroning Space Invaders.

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

Guinness later certified 293,822 machines installed worldwide, still the record for any coin-op game.

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

Half the maze turns into a garbled mess of symbols, and there are not enough dots left on screen to finish it.

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

It means eating every dot, energiser, fruit and blue ghost on 255 levels without dying, then using all six lives on the broken final level.

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

Twin Galaxies struck his records in 2018 over unrelated Donkey Kong tapes, but Guinness reinstated the Pac-Man score in 2020.

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

The claimed 6,131,940 points would have required passing level 256, and no player has ever demonstrated the ability to do so.

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

Its MIT-bred programmers had to offer it to Pac-Man's US distributor after a lawsuit with Atari barred them from selling conversion kits without permission.

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

Her colour was later changed to purple in a later game so she could be told apart from her original counterpart.

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

They rotate through pink, light blue, brown and dark blue colour schemes, and the ghosts 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?

Its programmers had come out of MIT and originally sold Missile Command speed-up kits.

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

They discovered the game in a Marietta, Georgia restaurant, played for two hours and wrote the song; the follow-up "Do the Donkey Kong" stalled at 103.

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

It drew more than 20 million child viewers at its debut and inspired a 1984 arcade platformer.

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

The family also included Pac-Baby, a dog called Chomp-Chomp and a cat called Sour Puss.

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

It took six months, sold more than eight million copies and is still routinely called one of the worst ports ever made.

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

The bonus fruit was replaced by an orange rectangle called the vitamin, and the ghosts flickered because only one could be drawn per frame.

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

Atari pressed more than a million cartridges in advance, and the game became the console's best seller despite the reviews.

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

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, named after the infamous glitch level, marked Pac-Man's 35th year?

Hipster Whale turned the level 256 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?

An estimated one billion people played the doodle, so Google gave it a permanent page of its own.

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

It was in the first wave of 14 video games acquired, alongside Tetris, Myst and The Sims.

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 Filipino boxer's nickname is Pac-Man?

NFL cornerback Adam Jones has carried the same nickname.

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

Denis Akiyama plays Toru Iwatani in the film, while Iwatani himself appears briefly as an arcade technician.

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

Its controls used buttons instead of a joystick, copied from Konami's Track & Field.

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

He also turns up as a driver in Namco's own Ridge Racer games.

Why was Pac-Man made yellow?

Namco artist Tadashi Yamashita later gave the character his big mouth, arms, legs and eyes for the cabinet art.

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

It was made for a series anniversary and later spawned a Chompionship edition.

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

In it Pac-Man attends Maze High School and the four ghosts are his allies against the villain Betrayus.

Which company did Namco merge with in the mid-2000s to form the group that now 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?

The nine-strong team included composer Toshio Kai and programmer Shigeo Funaki.

How many Pac-Man arcade units did Midway initially manufacture for the US before it caught on?

Within a year more than 100,000 units had sold, grossing over $1 billion in quarters.

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

It also surpassed the film Star Wars with more than $1 billion in revenue.

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?

It ran at 3.072 MHz with 16 kB of ROM and 3 kB of static RAM; the monitor was mounted rotated 90 degrees.