The Complete Guide to Pacman 30th Anniversary Game
Pacman 30th Anniversary Game, a video game first released in 1980 and still popular today, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. This is a timeless book that continues to sell millions of copies. To celebrate its 30 years in existence, we will be looking back at how one particular classic video game has changed over time.
How Pac-Man Came to Be
In honor of pacman 30th anniversary on May 21, 2010, Google featured a doodle of the game's logo on its homepage.
Originating with Toru Iwantani, a programmer for the Japanese firm Namco, Pacman has a long and storied history. The 25-year-old wanted to make a new video game that would really stand out at the time.
Many games of the era, he claims, featured violent plots centered on the elimination of alien invaders. Iwatani made a decision to design a game for both sexes despite knowing that his genre is more popular with men.
When he was munching on a slice of pizza, he had an idea for the Pac-Man protagonist. After cutting the first piece from the pie, he saw the remnants resembled the face of a man with his mouth open. He took inspiration from the form and based the Pac-Man game's yellow ghost on it.
To begin with, the original name for Pacman was PuckMan, which was derived from the Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound of food being eaten, paku paku. After a judge in the United States ruled that the original name was offensive, it was changed to Pac-Man.
The inspiration for the game's visual style and gameplay mechanics came from Japanese animation and manga, and after countless hours of development and testing, Pac-Man was released to the public on May 22, 1980. Immediately successful thanks to Namco's marketing, it spawned a slew of spinoffs.
Gameplay of Pac-Man
Pac Man, an arcade action game classified as a maze game, was created by Namco in 1980. To progress through the game, players assume the role of Pac-Man and must eat all of the dots located within a maze.
There are three different game modes (Chase, Scatter, and Frightened) with the same objective: kill Pac-Man. This may sound similar to the original Snake game, but Pac-Man takes it a step further by including four AI-powered colored ghosts with unique attack patterns.
Blinky (red), the first ghost, chases Pacman directly, while Pinky (pink) and Inky (cyan) set up shop in front of him to ambush or corner him, respectively. On the other hand, Clyde (orange) alternates between pursuing Pacman and escaping from him.
Power Pellets, located in the four upper corners of Pac-maze, Man's temporarily dizzy and turn the ghosts blue, allowing Pac-Man to chase them down and eat them for extra points.
It turns out that when a blue ghost is swallowed whole, it immediately regains consciousness in the central maze box.
Pacman's charm comes in part from his mild and friendly gameplay, but the real fun comes from navigating a straightforward maze in search of dots, fruits, and other score boosters while dodging a quartet of ghosts.
The Ultimate Pac-Man Guide for the Game's Silver Anniversary
To this day, as a child of the '90s, I still enjoy playing Pacman, albeit on a variety of platforms. Never in a million years did I think I'd be able to play a video game within the confines of the Google logo, and that includes everything from the original coin-op arcade machine to my personal computer, PlayStation Portable, Xbox, Nintendo DS, and more.
In order to honor Pacman 30th Anniversary, Google released a special Doodle that let’s fans test their skills to see if they’d be able to reach the end game – which is level 256.
Instead of a static image, this Doodle was fully interactive, requiring players to either wait 10 seconds or click a "Insert Coin" button to begin the game.
