Things You May Not Know About Pac-Man

So in a few weeks time, one of the most beloved of 80s video game franchises Pac-Man hits the milestone age of 35. He made his debut in Japan on May 22 1980 and has since become part of pop culture ever since. And with him doing some big things in recent times with his appearances in the films Wreck-It Ralph and the upcoming Pixels as well as his fighter debut in Super Smash Bros. For Wii U & 3DS, its good to know that Namco are using their mascot well. But despite all that, there may be a few things you may not know about this yellow gobbler and we're going to look at some of those things today. So let's get to it:

Puck-Man

Initially, Pac-Man was going to be known as Puck-Man. This name comes from the Japanese word paku which means chomp. However the name was changed as Namco realised that the name would be too similar to a particular F word in the English language, so changed the name to Pac-Man. Funnily enough, this little bit of trivia was mentioned in the film Scott Pilgrim VS The World.

A Recognizable Character

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Pac-Man is the most recognisable video game character of all time. The actual results are that at least 94% of Americans can recognise him from a mile off. But when you have such a simple design like the one above, you will know what it is, anywhere you go. The same book also awarded Pac-Man as the most successful coin operated game in 2005.

Pizza

This fact I think is very well known to everyone, but it just so happens that the original look for Pac-Man was based on a pizza with a single slice cut off. You will no doubt be seeing this very iconic look on a lot of 80s t-shirts that people wear on the streets.

The Highest Possible Score

So there is a way to get the highest possible score in a game of Pac-Man, but to do so, its required that you eat every last little dot, power pellet, fruit and ghost and reach the maximum score on the first 225 levels of the game. Then do the same on the final level which is known to be the famous split screen crash level and the score that any player can get as the highest score is 3,333,360. That is pretty massive if I do say so myself.

Ghost's Behaviour

If you've played games like Five Nights At Freddy (which I will tackle one day), chances are that you'll know that despite the enemies having the same motives, they can often behave quite differently and its no different with the ghosts of Pac-Man. Blinky (red) and Pinky (pink) are the most predictable and chase the player in the most direct way. Whereas Inky (blue) chooses a more ambush way to take the player down. Which leaves Clyde (orange) to take the most random approach, therefore making him the most dangerous of the 4.

Pac-Man for girls

The original plan for Pac-Man was for it to be designed to attract female players as male players often dominated the video game market in the 70s. In the words of the Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani arcade centres were a "playground for boys. It was dirty and smelly. So we wanted to include female players, so it would become cleaner and brighter." Did it work? Well only time will tell, but we did get a Ms. Pac-Man game later on.

Economical Term

Believe it or not, the name Pac-Man is actually also a economical term, often used to describe one company taking over a large percentage of another. Funny that.

Now obviously there are more things that you may not know about Pac-Man as well as the stuff said here, but you know, its great that after almost 35 years, this little yellow gobbler is still going strong and has been more popular than ever before all thanks to his many appearances in recent forms of media like films and of course video games. Any that I missed out? Well feel free to leave some of your own facts in the comments below and keep talking and playing a great iconic video game franchise that after 35 years is still worth playing and talking about. Waka Waka.