Pac-Man

Pac-Man

Arcade - USA - Cabinet.

Developer Namco Publisher Namco, Midway Published 1980-05-22 Platforms Android, Apple II, Arcade, Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, Commodore VIC-20, FM-7, Game Boy, Game Gear, Intellivision, iOS, MSX, Neo Geo Pocket Color, NES, Palm OS, PC-6000, PC-8800, PC Booter, Sharp MZ, Sharp X1, TI-99, Zaurus, ZX Spectrum Genres Action, Maze, Maze traversal, Single-screen Series Pac-Man Multiplayer Alternating versus Distribution Commercial

Pac-Man is a maze traversal video game developed and published by Namco for the arcade on 1980-05-22, and distributed by Midway in the USA in 1980-10-26. This is the first game in the Pac-Man series. The game currently holds the record for the best-selling arcade cabinet, and the second most profitable. Despite being so lucrative, the game's designer Toru Iwatani received only a meager bonus, equivalent to around $3,000, however, the success of the game gave secured him a promotion at Namco.

Personal

Own?	No.
Won?	No. The game doesn't have a proper ending.

I remember first playing this game in the mid-1980s. I was with my mother and brother, I think at a laundromat in Pontiac. I remember my brother playing and getting to the second stage, but I, being 3-years-younger, couldn't get past the first. I've since watched people who are really good play Pac-Man in arcades, but I've never had much of a desire to get good myself. The game is just too primitive to keep my interest.

I've never tried hard to get a decent score, and I've never even come close to the kill screen.

Review

4	4	4	3	3

Best Version: Arcade

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• The game is pretty solid. It remains challenging and fast-moving the entire time you play.
• The increasingly difficult ghosts and shorter-length power pellets increase the challenge of the game at a nice steady rate.
• Adding a different "personality" to each ghost was a wonderful idea and really adds to the challenge, as did having the ghosts systematically move toward their own corners.
• Changing the bonus fruit is a nice change of pace.
• The cut-scenes between levels was a nice break in the action.
• The game has some pretty memorable sound effects and jingles.

Bad

• The game is too hard. Most players are unable to beat the first level on their first attempt, which is a bit frustrating.
• Overall, there isn't much to do with the game. You're essentially repeating the same actions the entire game.
• Since the game's pseudo-randomizer is based on past performance, players can game how it functions and just repeat the exact same movements over an over again to beat the game. In fact, this is precisely how professional players play the game and it's incredibly boring to watch.
• The game lacks a true victory condition. Sure, the kill screen ends the game, but it's insanely difficult to reach, and wasn't even intended in the first place.
• There is a minor bug with collision detection where you can sometimes pass right through a ghost.

Ugly

• There isn't much to the game. Sure, it's from 1980, and you can't expect much, but it's extremely repetitive and not very rewarding to play.

Media

Box Art

• 

  The original Japanese cabinet is mostly a dull white. The Puck-Man logo uses a ballony type set and there are various cartoon Pac-Mans running around on it wearing boots and gloves. The joystick is an annoying simple rod.

• 

  The Japanese Puckman marquee is a bit of an eye-sore.

• 

  The Japanese Puckman side art.

• 

  The North American cabinet is a more interesting yellow, but while the ghost is pretty good, the cartoon Pac-Man is completely wrong. And the red eyes don't help much either!

• 

  The North American arcade marquee features the same creepy Pac-Man as the cabinet.

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  North American side art.

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  North American cocktail bezel.

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  North American control panel.

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  North American cocktail control panels.

• 

  Atari 8-bit.

• 

  Used for the PC-6001, FM-7, and Sharp MZ-80K.

Documentation

• 

  Instruction card - Arcade - Japan.

• 

  Manual - Arcade - USA.

• 

  Manual - Atari 5200 - USA.

• 

  Manual - Commodore 64 - USA.

• 

  Manual - Famicom - Japan.

• 

  Manual - Famicom - Japan - Digital.

• 

  Manual - Game Boy - USA.

• 

  Manual - Game Boy Advance - USA.

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  Manual - Game Boy Color - USA.

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  Manual - NES - USA - Namco - Digital

• 

  Manual - NES - USA - Tengen - Licensed.

• 

  Manual - NES - USA - Tengen - Unlicensed.

• 

  Manual - USA - Thunder Mountain.

• 

  How to Win At Pac-Man.

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  Pac-Man: The Ultimate Key to Winning.

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  The Video Master's Guide to Pac-Man.

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  How to Win At Video Games.

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  Pac-Mania: Top Strategies For Home & Arcade Pac-Man.

• 

  The Winners' Book of Video Games.

• 

  Pac-Mania!: The Official Pac-Man Joke Book.

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  Comic - Pac-Man's Christmas

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  Advertisement - Arcade - USA.

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  Advertisement - Namco - UK.

Screenshots

• 

  The original ghost names.

• 

  The American ghost names.

• 

  Game start.

• 

  Ready.

• 

  Pac-Man becomes invincible briefly after eating a power pellet.

• 

  Intermission 1: Pac-Man gets swoll.

• 

  Intermission 2: Blinky tears his sheet.

• 

  Intermission 3: Blinky is sewn up.

• 

  The infamous kill screen on level 256.

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  The game over screen.

Design Documents

• 

  Toru Iwatani showing off his original design documents.

• 

  The labyrinth layout.

• 

  The Pac-Man sprite.

• 

  Various game sprites.

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  Ghost movement behavior.

Graphics

• 

  Arcade graphic memory. Top is background, bottom is sprites. I've matched most of the colors, but the program swaps the palette as needed. Dark blue is drawn black in the game.

• 

  Arcade sprite sheet.

Fan Art

• 

  Fan art by Travis 76.

• 

  Comic by jdrift01.

• 

  Safely Endangered comic.

Videos

Retro Game Mechanics Explained - Detailed ghost AI info.

Retro Game Mechanics Explained - Frightened ghost AI info.

Ghost AI info.

How Pac-Man succeeded as a game.

Longplay - Perfect game & kill screen.

• gdcvault.com/play/1014631/Classic-Game-Postmortem-PAC - Postmortem.

Play Online

Arcade (Japan), Arcade (USA), ColecoVision, Commodore 64, Famicom, Game Boy (Europe), Game Boy (Japan), Game Boy (USA), Game Gear, MSX, Neo Geo Pocket Color, NES (Europe), NES (USA, Namco), NES (USA, Tengen, Licensed), NES (USA, Tengen, Unlicensed), PC Booter

Representation

Strong female character?	Fail	There are no women.
Bechdel test?	Fail	There is no dialogue.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	There are no human characters.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no queer characters.

Credits

Although Pac-Man doesn't feature credits, fans of the game have discovered the majority of the design staff.

Person	Staff
Toru Iwatani	Game Designer
Shigeichi Ishimura	Hardware Designer, Audio Designer
Shigeo Funaki	Programmer
Toshio Kai	Sound Composer

Color Palette

The original arcade version of Pac-Man uses a hardware-based color PROM to determine its colors. The PROM stores a palette of 256 colors in a single byte. The red, green, and blue channels are defined by the bit pattern BBGGGRRR which allows for eight levels of intensity for red and green and four levels for blue. The display hardware could only work with an index of 16 colors chosen from the palette of 256, and even then, each background tile or sprite could only be composed of up to four colors from the index of 16, one of which was always black. However, the game could choose from 32 unique palettes of four. With these limitation, a lot of the same colors had to be reused in each palette. The game always has multiple color indexes dedicated to black for various reasons, resulting in only 13 total unique colors. These blacks also appear to be used in certain graphics to color things invisible. For example, when pellets are eaten, the game continues to draw them, but it sets their color to black. Also, the area inside the maze walls is colored a different black than the background. This perhaps indicates the designers considered coloring it at one point, but later switched it to black in development. Ms. Pac-Man (which is mostly a hack of Pac-Man, colors in the maze walls).

In the table below, I've converted the colors from the game into RGB equivalents using an increment of 36 for the red and green channels and an increment of 85 for the blue channel. As far as I know, this does not properly emulate the color PROM's method, and I'm not able to get the true binary value for each color, but it yields a fairly accurate result. More advanced emulators, like MAME probably emulate the PROM, but MAME also adjusts each pixel based on its nearby pixels to better emulate CRTs, so it doesn't give a true result either.

Index	Swatch	Color	Converted RGB	Binary / Hex / Decimal	Uses
0		Black	0, 0, 0	00000000 0x00 0	Background
1		Red	252, 0, 0	00000111 0x07 7	Blinky, cherry, strawberry, apple, Galaxian ship
2		Brown	216, 144, 85	01100110 0x66 102	Orange top, cherry stem
3		Pink	252, 180, 255	11101111 0xEF 239	Pinky, ghost house door
4		Black	0, 0, 0	00000000 0x00 0	Background
5		Cyan	0, 252, 255	11111000 0xF8 248	Inky, player text
6		Blue	72, 180, 255	11101010 0xEA 234	Key top, bell bottom
7		Orange	252, 180, 85	01101111 0x6F 111	Clyde, orange
8		Black	0, 0, 0	00000000 0x00 0	Background
9		Yellow	252, 252, 0	00111111 0x3F 63	Pac-Man, ready!, bell, Galaxian ship
A		Black	0, 0, 0	00000000 0x00 0	Background
B		Indigo	36, 36, 255	11001001 0xC9 192	Maze walls, flashing ghosts, ghost pupils, Galaxian ship
C		Green	0, 252, 0	00111000 0x38 56	Melon, strawberry top, orange leaf
D		Teal	72, 180, 170	10101010 0xAA 170	Melon wrinkles and stem
E		Salmon	252, 180, 170	10101111 0xAF 175	Dots, ghost body, ghost face when flashing
F		White	252, 252, 255	11111111 0xFF 255	Flashing ghosts, scores, text, ghost eyes, fruit highlights

More details about the Pac-Man color palette: aarongiles.com/mamemem/part3.html.

Titles

Language	Native	Transliteration	Translation
English	Pac-Man
Japanese	パックマン	Pakkuman	Pakku Man

Links