Namco’s 1980 video game franchise, Pac-Man, is now considered one of the best video games of all time, because of its addictiveness and simplicity. Despite its humble beginnings as a game found in arcades, in 2005, Electronic Gaming Monthly ranked Pac-Man as the second best game ever, behind Super Mario Bros. With its 30th anniversary happening six months ago, it is important to re-evaluate Pac-Man’s role as a template for modern gaming.
Pac-Man started out as Namco’s Pakkuman, a Japanese version of the classic game. Indeed, Pac-Man revolutionized video gaming. In the early 80’s, the only widespread video games were space shooters like Space Invaders and tennis-style sports games like Pong.
Pac-Man took a simple concept but spun it in a whole new direction, opening up a new genre of action/puzzle games. As a result, the game earned over $1 billion in the first 15 months of its release (www.time.com).
The simple game also manages to be unexpectedly difficult. Between eating all of the yellow pellets and the fruits that provide bonus points, the game can be frustrating.
According to Mr. Hogya, “Albert Einstein said that definition of insanity is ‘doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.’ Interestingly enough, this explains my experience with Pac-Man.”
If new video game producers replicated the strategies of Pac-Man, they could see similar success. As Senior Don Connelly put it, “For its time, Pac-Man had a much better graphic quality and gameplay.”
Luckily, Pac-Man’s importance was recently honored. As homage to the game is 30th anniversary, Google created a homepage with a playable Pac-Man game on May 22, 2010 (www.google.com/pacman). Furthermore, the number of variants of the game have now achieved equal popularity.