Retro Wednesday: Pac Man

This is the little yellow guy who really put video games on the map and made the joystick a household name.  Pac Man changed the arcade game landscape in 1981 giving us something beyond your typical space-shooter like Asteroids and Space Invaders.  Pac Man was so popular that it spawned a bevy of licenced products, including toys, watches, bed linens, and of course a Saturday morning cartoon.

The game play of Pac Man is possibly the simplest of any video game.  You guide the Pac Man character through a maze, eating the pellets while avoiding the four ghosts chasing you.  There are 4 “power” pellets that when eaten turn the ghosts blue, allowing Pac Man to eat them for points.  Also, each level has a fruit that appears in the middle of the maze, twice per level.  Eating the fruit gives you additional points and these points rise with each level.

Pac Man made it to the home console on the Atari 2600 in 1982 and quickly became one of the most popular games, despite its terrible depiction of the action of Pac Man.  Atari over-produced the Pac Man cartridge leading towards the video game crash of 1983.    The ports of the game were much better on the Atari 5200 and can now be played on both the Wii and Xbox 360.

I pumped plenty of quarters in to Pac Man and it’s most famous sequels – Ms. Pac Man and Super Pac Man.  I don’t think it is possible to find someone between the ages of 30 and 40 who has not played a Pac Man game. 

Read more about Pac Man at wikipedia and the Killer List Of Video Games.