The most popular arcade game of all time celebrated its 40th anniversary on May 22. Pac-Man is a video game created by Tōru Iwatani by the Japanese company Namco. The goal of the game is really simple. It is a question of making the glutton Pac-Man swallow all the pills of the maze, and fruits from time to time to grab additional points, all while escaping the ghosts, which become faster and faster over the levels. The creator of the game was inspired by a slice of pizza for the shape of Pac-Man. He realized while eating one part that the rest of the pizza looked like a head with an open mouth. Initially the game was called "Puck-Man " after a play on words with "paku", which means "gobble up" or "engulf" in Japanese. Nevertheless, when the game was exported to the United States "Puck-Man" turned into Pac-Man so that people did not replace the "P" with the "F".
A basic dedicated game for women and couples
Toru Iwatani had designed this game for a different audience, usually male with quite violent games.
"I designed Pac-Man with women in mind. In the late 1970s, when I started working on the project, the arcades were full of violent games, in which you had to kill aliens. They were bad places. I wanted to make them more lively places, which would also welcome women and couples, without certainty of getting there. Toru Iwatani, creator of Pac-Man, for Le Monde"
An iconic game
According to the Guinness Book of World Records Pac-Man is the most popular arcade game of all time. In addition, Bandai Namco claims that the Pac-Man brand is "one of the best known in the world", with a 90% awareness rate. According to WIRED magazine, the highest possible score of the game is 3,333,360 points, at the end of the 256th and final level. Finally, for its 40th anniversary, the Amazon platform will launch in June a new Pac-Man Live Studio on Twitch and which will be accessible directly on the official channel of the game. The collaboration between Bandai Namco and Amazon Games could lead to more Pac-Man video games in the future. Bandai Namco used to collaborate for Pac-Man's birthday parties. For the 35th anniversary of the game, the Japanese company collaborated with the Australian studio Hipster Whale to create Pac Man 256, a game that refers to the famous level 256 bug.
