Pac-Man’s Secrets Revealed

Pac-Man happens to be one of the most iconic and widely known games of all time. It has sold countless copies on just about every gaming platform out there, from Xbox to plug and play controllers. However, up until now, there have been questions and misconceptions of the game ranging from the name origin to NPC programing.

Last week, at the San Francisco Game Developers Conference, Pac-man creator Toru Iwatani shed some light on some of Pac-Man’s mysteries. The ghosts, for instance, don’t all chase Pac-Man. They all have programming for different objectives.For example, only the red ghost, Blinky, actively chasses you, whereas the pink ghost aptley named “Pinky,” has an algorithm (orders) to stay 32 pixels in front of Pac-Man. As for Inkey, the blue ghost, he must position himself in a fixed location, and Clyde, the orange ghost, moves completely at random. These are all things that make Pac-Man more complex than most everyone thought.

Now, for the name Pac-Man. It started in Japan as “Puck Puck,” which directly translates to “munch munch.”  When ported to the English market, they planned on naming it Puck-Man.Thankfully, for a quick witted marketing agent, they changed the name to Pac-Man to prevent vandals from editing the word puck into something a little less family oriented.

The ghosts were almost one color! Before the game was launched, the Namco president wanted the ghosts to all be red, as to not confuse players into thinking any of them where Pac-Man’s allies. Iwatani refused and sent questionnaires to the game’s testers, and not a single player wanted uniformed ghosts. Thus Pac-man, as we know it, was born.

The little things you learn, right?