This strategy worked, and Pac-Man attracted both male and female audiences. Toru Iwatani has stated that while developing Puckman, he wanted to create a game that could appeal to women, as most (if not all) arcade games at the time did not. By the time it was released in the U.S., the name was altered to the intended Pac-Man name, although this was actually changed due to fear of machine vandalism (changing "P" in "Puck" into an "F"). In the game, the player navigates Pac-Man through a maze to eat all of the dots, while avoiding Ghosts.Īs previously stated, the game was called Puckman in English, despite being closer to Pac-Man in Japanese text. The original Puckman arcade game was released in Japan on May 22, 1980. As to if Namco's Pac-Man was truly coincidental compared to Tomy's Pac-Man remains unclear and Iwatani's origin claims cannot be completely disproven. However, Iwatani himself has stated this claim to be a "half-truth" with the proper inspiration for Pac-Man being the Japanese kanji for "mouth" (口). According to more commonly cited reports, Pac-Man was based on a pizza with the first quarter of it cut out, which inspired Toru Iwatani to create the character. Namco, to this day, seems to intentionally not mention the existence of the toy line. After the arcade game's release, Tomy seemed to have worked out a roughly decade-exclusive licensing deal with Namco this would imply some form of agreement was met between the two, in exchange for Namco acquiring the full Pac-Man character/trademark rights. Some inspiration was seemingly drawn from the toy line (although the gameplay premise itself was unique), and the actual Japanese katakana (パックマン "Pakkuman") was identical, despite the English reading "Puck" instead of "Pac". The arcade game, originally called Puckman in Japan, was created by Namco employee Toru Iwatani. The three Pac-Man toys released in the 1970s Subsequent toys include a board game and a water game, both of which were released overseas as "Mr. The first of these was a toy bank, in which Pac-Man (also referred to as "Je Je" on some models) would munch down coins by flipping them into his mouth via a lever. Pac-Man's first appearance was not in the original arcade game unknown to many, the series originated as a line of toys by Tomy in 1974, six years prior to the game. Pac-Man's origin is a confusing mystery, with multiple unique claims that contradict each other, neither of which can be 100% proven true or false.
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