

I even made my very own board game with its own set of rules back then. What’s the first game you ever played? What was it like? How did you decide to make games? The games I first played were board games and card games. Have you played Pac-Man with the "speed chip" installed? Do you prefer it fast or regular? I’m not familiar with these “speed chips,” but the game was designed under the premise of offering balance in the gameplay, so it would be nice if everyone plays the game as it was intended.Īnswer See Results Did you include any secrets in Pac-Man’s code? I didn’t include any Easter Eggs or features to the game.
#PAC MAN ANNIVERSARY 2020 INSTALL#
Many people install a "speed chip" to make Pac-Man faster. The design may be a product of the time, but we didn’t compromise the design because of technological limitations, and is as close to perfect as we can get. If there’s one thing you could change about the original Pac-Man, what would it be? What’s something you couldn’t add to Pac-Man at the time because of technical restrictions but wish you could have? With the game’s various features, such as the warp tunnels, the Ghost algorithm, the speed settings between Pac-Man and the Ghosts, I don’t think there’s anything in the game’s design that I would change or alter in any way. Tadashi Iguchi came up with are simply amazing. What’s your favorite Pac-Man game or sequel? I’d say it’s the successor to the original Pac-Man game, “Pac-Man Championship Edition.” The game rules, game speed and graphics that Mr. The Pac-Man phone, and other Pac-Man ephemera from the author's personal collection. They managed to have the buttons lined up inside Pac-Man’s mouth, and you had to open his mouth to use the phone. I was impressed by how they properly captured the character’s design and incorporated the phone’s features. What’s the weirdest place you’ve encountered Pac-Man? I’d have to say it’s the Pac-Man phone, which was sent to us as a licensed product sample. Pac man has been on board games, napkins, and cereal. Seeing that convinced me that we had made the right design decisions when developing the game. It was amazing to see young and old players from all walks of life playing the game. Did you ever visit an American arcade in Pac-Man’s heyday? What did you think? I actually did go to the US a few years after Pac-Man became a hit there. If the program made all the Ghosts chase after Pac-Man, it would have just made them trail Pac-Man, and that’s not very exciting on its own, which is why we adopted an algorithm for the Ghosts’ AI, making them disperse and move around Pac-Man.

Shigeo Funaki, and he came up with the Ghost algorithm for the game, which was simply amazing. What was your Pac-Man team like? Who contributed the most besides you and how? I worked closely with one of the programmers when we were developing the game, and we coordinated extensively until we both agreed on the design. Iwatani about what game development was like in 1979, and how he and his team developed gaming's first mega hit. Back in 1979 he led a nine-person team that created Pac-Man, with the goal of creating a game that appealed to mass audiences beyond the male-dominated arcades at the time. Iwatani teaches games to new generations. Now a full-time lecturer at Tokyo Polytechnic University, Mr. But what was Pac-Man? Pac-Man's geometric shapes, rendered in blues, reds, yellows, and pinks, glowing in an inky, black void form an abstract image that was magically intuitive to navigate, but impossible to explain - except, perhaps, by Pac-Man's creator, Toru Iwatani.

While the games that came before Pac-Man were high tech wonders, they were largely colorless and strictly representative: Balls, paddles, and space ships.
