Pac-Man

Pac-Man is an arcade video game created by Namco and first released in Japan on May 22, 1980. Its designer, Toru Iwatani, wanted a game that could attract a broader audience than shooting games, and built its identity around eating. The Japanese title was Puck Man, a name changed to Pac-Man for North American cabinets because distributors feared that vandals could alter the initial letter of "Puck." Namco licensed the North American release to Midway, which introduced the cabinet in late 1980; the game became one of the decade's defining arcade successes.

Pac-Man has no conventional story campaign. In every round, the yellow character navigates a single-screen maze, eating all 240 ordinary pellets while avoiding four ghosts. The ghosts are Blinky, the red ghost; Pinky, the pink ghost; Inky, the cyan ghost; and Clyde, the orange ghost. Although their behaviors look similar, each uses a distinct targeting rule, giving the maze a changing pattern of pressure rather than a simple chase. A power pellet in each corner temporarily turns the ghosts blue and lets Pac-Man eat them for points, with successive captures in one power cycle worth 200, 400, 800, and 1,600 points.

Fruit appears near the maze's center during a level and supplies bonus points, including cherries, strawberries, oranges, apples, melons, galaxian flagships, bells, and keys. Clearing a maze advances the player to the next board, where pellet colors, ghost timing, and vulnerability windows continue to challenge increasingly precise movement. The original game contains 255 playable levels. Level 256 is famous as the "split-screen" or "kill screen": an integer-overflow error corrupts the right side of the maze, making a normal completion impossible.

Billy Mitchell was long credited with the first perfect score, but Twin Galaxies removed that record in 2018 after disputed evidence; the achievement remains associated with completing the first 255 levels, eating every fruit, and losing no lives. The game's simple controls, four directions on a joystick, hide carefully timed tunnel shortcuts, ghost-house behavior, and fixed patterns that skilled players can exploit. Its recognizable opening melody, maze design, and character silhouettes helped make Pac-Man a cultural phenomenon, while its cabinet established an enduring model for score-based arcade play. Because the rules are immediately legible yet strategically deep, Pac-Man rewards route planning, memorization, risk management, and reflexes; its historical importance comes not from a fictional world, but from turning a maze and four pursuers into a balanced competitive system.