If you were to pick a “mascot” for the arcade industry, the chances are that Namco’s PAC-MAN would win the polls of public opinion. Yes, there had been some basic characters that popped up in some games here and there prior to the hungry yellow guy coming along, but none had quite supercharged the scene like PAC-MAN would do.
Today is the 45th anniversary of Toru Iwatani’s creation, so with that, let’s reminisce down memory lane. Note that due to lack of time and stopping this from becoming the length of a short novel, we’re going to keep this brief as opposed to writing out a doctoral thesis on each game. Also note that very soon, we’re going to launch an Arcade Hall Of Fame on the site; Pac-Man is on that list, but it’s still time consuming to get everything on there that needs to be.
PAC-MAN
Japan/US release: May / October 1980. The genesis of PAC-MAN began with what Namco had initially called Puck-Man, but when they settled on a licensor (Midway), the wise decision was made to adjust that to PAC, after a brief bit of dithering with the more generic and obscure Snapper name. It didn’t take long for the game to become a sensation on the arcade scene, building upon big successes like Taito’s Space Invaders and Atari’s Asteroids to quickly become the face of arcades all over the planet. That said, Atari would pick up the home license for the game, and due to their heavy marketing in conjunction with their home systems, some people would erroneously think that it was an Atari-made title as opposed to Namco.
PAC-MAN earned many distinctions, including the highest grossing arcade video game and it is claimed to be one of the best selling arcade games ever manufactured, apparently moving almost 300,000 units between 1980 & 1987. To be fair, it was Bally VP William Peltier who provided numbers to the press of “over 100,000 Pac-Man units and over 125,000” Ms. Pac-Man units, thus combining the two to reach that gives the near 300k number that is often brought up out there.
Also note that the legend about Pac-Man being inspired by a pizza is only “half-true”, according to the game’s creator…
MS. PAC-MAN
JP/US release: Jan. 13th, 1982. Starting off as a hack of PAC-MAN by the name of Crazy Otto, Midway was salivating to extend the PAC-MAN fever as best they could, and so they worked out a deal with the Crazy Otto creators to turn this into an “sort-of” official sequel. As we’ll see over the next several games, Midway took some liberties to build upon the sensation that they had – which made for some friction between them and Namco when the industry saw a downturn. If you want a full “post-mortem” on the history behind this one, you can watch it here.
That said, Ms. PAC-MAN made everything about the original experience better, with more map styles and new patterns that led it to be just as popular, if not more, than the game it was based on. Which makes it an even bigger shame that this game and the character herself got tied up in needless legal issues with a certain low quality plug and play console/home arcade cabinet company…
Mr. & Mrs. PAC-MAN
Ms. Pac-Man didn’t remain a bachelorette for very long, as Bally would roll out the first pinball machine in April 1982 with this machine (the same month that Atari would release their disastrous Pac-Man port to the Atari 2600). Pinball was having a difficult time competing against video games at this time though, so this game only managed to move 10,600 units (which still isn’t bad for a pin at the time, but just a drop in the bucket compared to the video sales).
Neither of the pinball versions of Pac-Man were officially released in Japan.
Super PAC-MAN
Japan/US release: Aug. / Dec. 1982. This Midway created sequel has its fans, but the changes to basic gameplay – swapping out the dots with fruits, and having locked doors where you needed to eat keys to open them – didn’t quite resonate with players like the previous two games did. It also didn’t help that the US industry was already beginning the downward spiral towards the Great Crash by the time that this found its way into arcades.
Baby PAC-MAN
US release: Oct. 1982. Even with multiple Pac-Man games in production, including the aforementioned pin, Bally figured “why not both?” and made this video/pinball hybrid game. That or you can say that the happy couple wasted no time in starting a family. Either way, this was a cool concept, as you’ll play the video segment to then unlock the pinball on, but it wasn’t without some significant problems. Having “baby” in the title probably set up expectations for it being a breeze of a game, but the video portion is one of the more challenging versions of Pac-Man ever created; then, it is notorious for being a maintenance nightmare.
Pac & Pal
This Japanese-only release (July 1983) was a variation on Super Pac-Man, and mashes together some elements from other Namco games including Galaga & Rally-X. You also would flip over cards to unlock doors.
Professor Pac-Man
US release: Aug. 1983. Here was an attempt to use Pac-Man to create a video quiz game, which would have allowed Midway to sell new updates for refreshed questions. It was a total dud though, perhaps being the worst selling Pac-Man game of all time.
Jr. Pac-Man
US Release: Either August or October 1983. After failing to find a strong audience with most of the aforementioned Pac-experiments, Jr. Pac-Man brought things back to dot eating. It would also improve the graphics as far as adding horizontal scrolling, however, this ended up falling flat too, since it meant that you couldn’t see if you’d missed a dot on some part of the maze that’s off screen. Perhaps if widescreen technology had been available back then, it would have been different.
PAC-LAND
JP/US release: August/December 1984. Before Super Mario Bros. was a thing in the West, there was Pac-Land. No, this wasn’t the first scrolling platformer, but it was an early example of a genre that would soon become dominate both in arcades and on consoles.
PAC-Mania
JP/US release: November/December 1987. After the crash had rearranged how the industry worked, it gave the franchise a rest for a bit. Namco would become a major stakeholder in Atari Games in 1985, which resulted in several Namco-made games finding their way into US arcades with the Atari Games logo on them – including this return to the Pac-Man concept that borrowed the problem that Jr. Pac-Man had – now just with 8-way scrolling across an isometric playfield. It also gave Pac-Man the ability to jump, and it had some cool looking levels with different themes.
Hyper PAC-MAN
Released in 1994 by Semicom. This made-for-Korea release brought the concept back to a single screen, and added some other interesting elements that could be seen as inspirations for what Namco would do with the Pac-Man Arrangement game, which we’ll talk about right after the video:
PAC-MAN Arrangement
Released March 1996. After an even longer coin-op hiatus, this was a unique version of Pac-Man that was included as one of the six titles on the Namco Classic Collection Volume 2 arcade game. No more scrolling mazes, but it did have a variety of themed levels, several power-ups, and even co-op play. I’ve had one of these since I opened my arcade in 2008 and it really is a hidden gem among Pac-Man titles.
PAC-MAN VR
Released in 1996. This is one of the rarer releases on the list, since it only came out for the Virtuality coin-op VR platform – and even then, it was hard to find. This was the first time that Pac-Man could be played in the first person (that I know of), and you could even stand up higher to look over the maze walls.
PAC-MAN Anniversary Series
After ’96, Namco was content to leave Pac-Man to promoting things on the console side of the universe for a long time, although with high demand for real arcade versions of Pac-Man for home users (and some arcades), they realized that there was an opportunity there. As such, they’ve released several “anniversary” games that include Pac-Man and some other Namco titles – although Ms. Pac-Man’s inclusion has been an on/off thing thanks to the weird legal issues that surround it.
Note that all of these were released in some kind of official coin-op form; I’m not including stuff like Arcade 1up.
PAC-MAN Battle Royale
Released in Summer 2011. The next official Pac-Man arcade/coin-op release was a variation of a digital console game that pitted up to four people against each other within neon-style Pac-Man mazes. This competitive take in the series became a staple for many locations both arcade & FEC, seeing a release in a cocktail kind of cabinet, and later a stand-up deluxe.
Fast forward to 2022, and Bandai Namco gave this a “Chompionship” update, which added a bunch of fun power-ups to the mix and the ability to support 8-players at once.
World’s Largest PAC-MAN
Released in May 2016. Working with Raw Thrills, Bandai Namco decided that one way to innovate the franchise was to make it really big. Sporting an 8′ tall RGB LED dot matrix display, this put the original version of Pac-Man back into the spotlight, while also allowing players to play co-op with a friend. Later on, a software updated added Galaga to it.
Additional Pac-Fun
There are many more titles which have donned the Pac-Man name, or included him prominently like the Mario Kart Arcade GP titles, although many happen to fall into categories like air hockey, basketball, redemption, and more. Bandai Namco also has their modern “Pac-Man Street Range” line that they are actively producing as we read this. Apologies if I missed anything or get a date wrong – I don’t track some of the sports/redemption stuff as well as I do video games, but we’ll make any corrections if needed.
- Pac-Man Smash (2012)
- Pac-Man Basket (2013)
- Pac-Man Ghost Bowling (2013)
- Pac-Man Ticket Mania (2013)
- Pac-Man Swirl (2014)
- Pac-Man Feast (2015)
- Pac-Man Panic (2019)
- Pac-Man Power Pellets (2022)
- Pac-Man Baller (2023)
- Pac-Man Roller (2023)
- Pac-Man Slider (2023)
There is additionally the borderline case of Pac-Man E1 Grand Prix, Namco’s extremely rare eco-friendly driver collaboration with Nissan from 2011. This only ever had a very limited release in Japan though, presumably because it would’ve been too similar to the aforementioned Mario Kart Arcade GP games in which Pac appears.
What in your view is the Pac-Man arcade game that rules them all? And where would you like to see the mascot go in arcades next?
