Pac-Man
Pac-Man is a Japanese arcade game developed by Namco (now Bandai Namco and licensed for distribution in the U.S. by Midway. It was originally titled Puck Man, an Anglicization of the Japanese “pakku-man” (パックマン), itself a term inspired by the Japanese onomatopoeic phrase paku-paku taberu (パクパク食べる), where paku-paku describes (the sound of) the mouth movement when widely opened and then closed in succession. For the North American market, the name was changed from Puck Man to Pac-Man in an attempt to stop vandals who might change the P to an F, producing a common English expletive.
As a testament to its
popularity, today you can still find Puck Man and Pac-Man
machines throughout Europe, even though Pac-Man was first
released in Japan on May 22, 1980, and in the US markets
shortly thereafter. It became immensely popular in the
United States because of the change in format and layout
that it offered gamers. American audiences had never seen
this type of video game before, and after years of Space
Invaders soon to be
Galaga the genre of maze-chase video games was
untapped. Soon a slew of copy cats and wannabes emerged,
flooding the market with unofficial clones.
Most arcade video games in North America at the time of
release were primarily space shooters; there was also a
visible minority of sports games (mostly along the lines of
Pong). Pac-Man was unique, and I feel that it succeeded
because it created a new genre of its own that appealed to
both males and females. To cover their bases, though, the
developers later would release the vastly inferior Ms.
Pac-Man.
I can recall this game, in both the standup “booth”
version, and the sit down “table” version. I preferred the
table version for versus games, as it allowed you and your
opponent to sit opposite one another at your own joy stick.