Also, the warp tunnels and tweaking the speed of Pac-Man and the Ghosts toward the end of development made quite an impact. I think the biggest change came from the addition of the Power Pellet that is used to turn the tables between Pac-Man and the Ghosts. How much did the original game evolve with testing from the original concept? We know that the warp tunnels on the side of the screen were added late in development. Teamwork was great among the seven on our team, which was composed of three software developers, one computer-hardware designer, one wiring-board designer, one machine designer, and one cabinet designer, who all worked hard to build the game. Was it helpful to have that many people working on an arcade game? Your original development team included seven people, which seems incredibly large for a game made in 1980. I suppose the simple game mechanic and cute characters resonated well with male and female, young and old alike, but I never expected it to blow up like that. I initially thought it wouldn’t do well in the U.S., where gamers sought games that offered thrills and excitement. Were you surprised by its varying success in different markets? Pac-Man performed well in Japan, but its popularity really exploded in the U.S. I may have come up with a game where you’re at a baseball field, and you would have to make a choice whether to let your hot dog go or to catch the ball flying toward you in the stands. What kind of game do you think you would have made if you’d been eating hot dogs instead? Oh, it’s the truth all right! I was eating a whole pizza while I was thinking about making a game themed after “eating.” It was then that I came up with Pac-Man’s game design after looking at the pie with a slice taken from it. The popular story is that you created Pac-Man after seeing a pizza with a missing slice, but some have disputed that. I still play pinball, but not many arcades in Japan have them nowadays, so I literally go the extra mile just to play them. Pinball captivated me with how the ball moves according to the laws of physics, the fun in reading the ball’s movement, and with the vibrant graphics that adorned the backglass and playfield. Do you still play pinball? What do you think of the new machines? Having the Ghosts chase you then turning the tables and chasing the Ghosts and gobbling them up in succession is quite gratifying, which I think is another reason why the game is adored to this day.īefore getting into the digital arcade market, you wanted to make pinball machines. Toru Iwatani: We targeted the game towards female audiences and dating couples, so I believe the cute design, the easy learning curve, and simple-yet-intuitive four-way controls resonated well with everyone. Why do you think the character has had such an impressive legacy? Pac-Man is actually older than a lot of the people who play games today. In honor of this anniversary, we spoke with Iwatani about the creation of Pac-Man and why he thinks the character has had such a lasting legacy. According to the Guinness World Records, more than 293,000 Pac-Man machines were built throughout the ‘80s, making it the most successful coin-operated arcade machine ever produced. The release of Pac-Man created a frenzy that reportedly caused coin shortages and spawned a Top 40 single. Forty years ago, Toru Iwatani took a look at a pizza then created one of the most iconic video game characters of all time.
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