Pac-Man

Pac-Man is an action maze chase video game; the player controls the eponymous character through an enclosed maze. The objective of the game is to eat all of the dots placed in the maze while avoiding four colored ghosts—Blinky (red), Pinky (pink), Inky (cyan), and Clyde (orange)—who pursue Pac-Man. When Pac-Man eats all of the dots, the player advances to the next level. Levels are indicated by fruit icons at the bottom of the screen. In between levels are short cutscenes featuring Pac-Man and Blinky in humorous, comical situations.

If Pac-Man is caught by a ghost, he loses a life; the game ends when all lives are lost. Each of the four ghosts has its own unique artificial intelligence (A.I.), or "personality": Blinky gives direct chase to Pac-Man; Pinky and Inky try to position themselves in front of Pac-Man, usually by cornering him; and Clyde switches between chasing and fleeing from Pac-Man depending on his distance from him.

After acquiring the struggling Japanese division of Atari in 1974, Namco began producing its own video games in-house rather than licensing them from other developers to distribute in Japan. Company president Masaya Nakamura created a small video-game development group within the company that studied several NEC-produced microcomputers for their potential for creating games. Among the first people assigned to the division was 24-year-old employee Toru Iwatani. He created Namco's first video game Gee Bee in 1978, which, while unsuccessful, helped the company gain a stronger foothold in the quickly growing video-game industry. He assisted in the production of two sequels, Bomb Bee and Cutie Q, both released in 1979.

The Japanese video-game industry had surged in popularity with games such as Space Invaders and Breakout, and the market became flooded with similar titles. Iwatani felt that the crude graphics and violence of arcade games limited their appeal to men only and that arcades were seen as seedy environments. For his next project, Iwatani chose to create a nonviolent, cheerful game that appealed mostly to women, as he believed that attracting women and couples into arcades would create a more family-friendly atmosphere. Iwatani considered women's most frequent activities and then decided to center his game around eating, feeling that women like to eat sweets. His game was initially titled Pakkuman, based on the Japanese onomatopoeia term "paku paku taberu", referencing the mouth movement of opening and closing in succession.

Upon its North American debut at AMOA 1980, the game initially received a mild response. Play Meter magazine previewed the game and called it "a cute game which appears to grow on players, something which cute games are not prone to do", saying that there's "more to the game than at first appears" but criticized the sound as a drawback, saying it is "good for awhile, then becomes annoying". Upon release, the game exceeded expectations with wide critical and commercial success. Contemporary arcade coverage reflected the game´s standing; the July 1982 issue of Electronic Games described Pac-Man as one of the top trackball-spinning arcaders, ahead of Tempest.

Reviewing home console versions in 1982, Games magazine called the Atari 5200 implementation a "splendidly reproduced" version of the arcade game, noting a difference in maze layouts for the television screen. It considered the Atari 2600 version to have "much weaker graphics", but to still be one of the best games for that console. In both cases the reviewer felt that the joystick controls were harder to use than those of the arcade machine, and that "attempts to make quick turns are often frustrated".

Guinness World Records has awarded the Pac-Man series eight records in Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition 2008, including "Most Successful Coin-Operated Game". On June 3, 2010, at the NLGD Festival of Games, the game's creator, Toru Iwatani, officially received the certificate from Guinness World Records for Pac-Man having had the most "coin-operated arcade machines" installed worldwide: 293,822. The record was set and recognized in 2005 and mentioned in the Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition 2008, awarded in 2010. In 2009, Guinness World Records listed Pac-Man as the most recognizable video game character in the United States, recognized by 94% of the population, above Mario who was recognized by 93% of the population.

In 2015, The Strong National Museum of Play inducted Pac-Man to its World Video Game Hall of Fame. The Pac-Man character and game series became an icon of video game culture during the 1980s.