It was 1979, when a company from Japan became renowned for its take on fellow Taito's Space Invaders, Galaxian. Its colorful graphics and elaborate gameplay mechanics launched Namco to the ranks of its competitors during the golden age of arcade games. Then came year 1980, and Namco had already decided to hop off the bandwagon of space shooters to devise something new for the turn of the decade-the one the company would come to look back on most proudly. That project became Pac-Man. It did not fit under any easily recognizable genre at the time. It was idiosyncratic.
Being the game with the highest number of cabinets sold and revenue generated, Pac-Man is a nonviolent maze game whose strength lies in its appeal to a broad demographic and being the first game in many arcade-goers' memories to star a titular character they so cared for. It is also unique, for, while not the first of its kind, it is also the first game in many arcade-goers' memories to take place in a maze, and could be considered the grandfather of maze games. The simplicity of the gameplay, however, remains about the same. The maze is largely populated with dots and pellets that Pac-Man, the yellow circle who appears below the center of the maze, must devour. The goal immediately becomes intuitive as the player watches their character consume the dots and the score jump up. It then becomes clear once the player cleans the maze of the dots and pellets.
In the center of the maze is a station housing four differently colored ghosts, Pac-Man's opposition and the player's source of challenge. At the start of each level, the ghosts scatter to each of the maze's corners before chasing Pac-Man, allowing the player to make their first move. The ghosts pose a threat because touching any one of them leads to Pac-Man getting devoured himself, costing a life. The poor guy is defenseless and confined in a labyrinth of claustrophobia-inducing tunnels that turn or intersect. I mentioned the four pellets, but waited for the opportunity to explain why they are different from the dots. The pellets were another oddity at the time. No game before Pac-Man is known to feature what would come to be known as power-ups-game modifiers that grant the player an advantage over their obstacles. In this case, eating one pellet makes all of the ghosts blue and horrified and turn around to walk directionless and more slowly as they are stunned with fear. It is at this point that touching a ghost leads to that ghost being eaten instead. When that happens, the ghost loses their body and their remains, the eyeballs, retreat to the center of the maze for a new body. The player is rewarded points, including more for biting more ghosts at a time. One should note the pellet's effects wear out after a short time frame, after which the ghosts become fearlessly deadly again. The pellet's effects are reflected in one of the game's cutscenes-also unusual for an arcade game at the time-in which a fleeing Pac-Man comically quadruples in size before chasing Blinky off-screen. The brief cutscenes worked as a convenient way of breaking the player's stress of endurance.
It is weird to think how a game like Pac-Man with its graphics and sound effects came out in a year that my dad owned an Apple II Plus while he was still in high school. Then again, my interests are in computers, much less the meatier arcade cabinets of the same era. Pac-Man is colorful. It is also ingenious, considering that its animations compensate for its lack of shimmering brilliance. A simple yellow circle attempts to clear the entire maze of smaller white circles while avoiding capture by one of the four differently colored ghosts and being cut into pizza slices. Pac-Man opens and closes his mouth once as he moves one space, chomping any dot and pellet in the way and producing the iconic "waka-waka" sound effect. The maze is bilaterally symmetrical, composed of walls outlined blue and shaped like I's, L's, and T's, with gracefully rounded corners. It is always interesting to see what fruit the artist had given each level, which apparently includes bells and keys.
The gameplay is chaotic. Armed with only a digital joystick, one is frantically having to decide which path to take as the ghosts block tunnels and attempt to box in our hero (at least I assume he is meant to be good). Most of the tunnels are not long, often allowing for escape, but their tightness and the phantom teamwork become the perfect ingredients for claustrophobia. It is actually easy to take the wrong path or become hopelessly surrounded, but these only come about as a result of player impatience, error, or the player overlooking the ghosts' positions or minor details. Those details include running around rounded corners to gain distance ahead of ghosts and the fact that Pac-Man is slightly slower than usual when eating the dots, costing him distance. One soon learns that each of the ghosts behaves differently. Blinky, their ringleader, likes to take the shortest route to the player character at every turn. He is also the most agile of the ghosts and can actually outrun Pac-Man as he stalks him. Pinky will also chase him, though not always from behind. Instead, he will consider the protagonist's current direction and try to get in front of him. Inky's behavior is capricious; he will sometimes chase Pac-Man and will sometimes not. Clyde's goal is just to traverse the maze aimlessly. It may be tempting to see the first two as a deadly-enough duo and dismiss the rest, but when the player thinks they outsmarted Blinky and Pinky, the others become an equal threat.
Eventually, one learns that the ghosts follow a pattern. The ghosts only ever turn around when switching from scatter mode to chase mode and vice versa and when Pac-Man picks up a power pellet. This allows the player to manipulate their behavior. It is always satisfying to fool Pinky into thinking that he is getting in front of me when, in fact, I got him to take a long path as I taunt its inability to turn around. There are also paths the ghosts never seem to take in a certain direction unless frightened or switching modes, which I will leave to the player to discover. The warp tunnels on each side of the maze are also useful since the ghosts will tread more slowly in these tunnels and cannot seem to figure out that sometimes the quickest route to Pac-Man on the other side of the maze is through the warp tunnel. One also finds out that the power pellets diminish in usefulness to the point that the ghosts are immune to them and the only thing the pellets are good for is getting the ghosts to turn around. As Pac-Man clears the maze, the ghosts pick up the pace, as does the looping background sound effect. Eventually, the ghosts become fully agile in the later levels, and the player is expected to remember the subtleties and keep track of the ghosts' positions or be sliced. So many possibilities, so many mistakes, so few correct moves, so little time. My only criticism is that every level has one same maze, so I can imagine that someone will eventually be put off and move on to another game or activity for a while.
VERDICT:
Pac-Man was unique in a number of ways. It did not fit under any known genre at the time, and it also stretched the appeal of arcade games beyond largely teenage, almost exclusively male enthusiasts to attract female players and players of all ages. It delivered a creative gameplay of comparable enjoyability while keeping the violence at a minimum. It also popularized video game elements such as power-ups and (though sometimes controversially) cutscenes that have since appeared in an endless list of video games. I would consider this game to be one of the greatest, but it has been overshadowed by its sequel, Ms. Pac-Man. While requiring more skill than the original, the game starring Pac-Man's wife delivered what the first one lacked, and it was also about the first female video game character that many people remembered. Still, Pac-Man began a franchise, boosted Namco's overall standing, and established a mascot still used to this day from an arcade game Namco can always look back on.
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