Pac-Man fever (great game history)
Toru Iwatani , who worked for the Japanese toy maker Namco , created his masterpiece in 1980. The game for automatic machines was called “Puck-Man” and gained great popularity in Japan.
It was a new genre: at that time, space shooters (like Asteroids) and various variants of the Pong game (the one where two rectangles, symbolizing the racket, are thrown by a square ball) were mainly released. And in “Puck-Man,” it was necessary to control a character in a single-screen maze, dodging ghosts and eating balls. During the movement, the character slams his mouth, which is accompanied by the sounds of “pack-pack-pack”, hence the name of the hero and the name of the game. The level ends when all the balls are eaten. The story repeats until the change of 255 screens. Alas, the 256th is displayed with errors, so playing it is impossible.
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Rights to publish Puck-Man in the United States were bought by Midway ; however, it was decided that it would be better to release the game under the name “Pac-Man” - in the Japanese version it would be very easy for children to spoil the body of the machine by forwarding “P” to “F”: “Fuck-Man” ...
The miracle of Japanese thought was firmly established in American pop culture. In 1982, the disco-rock duo Buckner & Garcia even recorded the song “Pac-Man Fever”, in which:
In the wake of the popularity of Buckner & Garcia signed a contract with the label Columbia and were forced to make an album about video games.
A lot of rework was released for Pacman: Caterpillar Pac-Man (the caterpillar runs away from the spiders), Piranha (the piranha runs away from the octopuses), Lock'n'Chase (the thief runs away from the police). Especially popular was the game " Mrs. Pakman " - perhaps the first arcade game in which it was proposed to act as a female character, is also a kind of breakthrough. There was a complicated story about Mr. Pakman, Mrs. Pakman and their child, which was realized in the animated television series about how the pack-family defends the pack-land from ghosts. In the series, a whole bunch of words received the prefix “pak-”, and all the objects of the drawing world were spherical.
Pac-Man was published for the Apple II, Atari, Commodore 64, Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy. Later, of course, in various incarnations, for PC, XBox, and so on.
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It was a new genre: at that time, space shooters (like Asteroids) and various variants of the Pong game (the one where two rectangles, symbolizing the racket, are thrown by a square ball) were mainly released. And in “Puck-Man,” it was necessary to control a character in a single-screen maze, dodging ghosts and eating balls. During the movement, the character slams his mouth, which is accompanied by the sounds of “pack-pack-pack”, hence the name of the hero and the name of the game. The level ends when all the balls are eaten. The story repeats until the change of 255 screens. Alas, the 256th is displayed with errors, so playing it is impossible.
')
Rights to publish Puck-Man in the United States were bought by Midway ; however, it was decided that it would be better to release the game under the name “Pac-Man” - in the Japanese version it would be very easy for children to spoil the body of the machine by forwarding “P” to “F”: “Fuck-Man” ...
The miracle of Japanese thought was firmly established in American pop culture. In 1982, the disco-rock duo Buckner & Garcia even recorded the song “Pac-Man Fever”, in which:
'Cause I've got Pac-Man fever!
(Pac-Man fever!)
It's driving me crazy!
(Driving me crazy!)
I've got Pac-Man fever!
(Pac-Man fever!)
I'm going out of my mind!
(Going out of my mind!)
In the wake of the popularity of Buckner & Garcia signed a contract with the label Columbia and were forced to make an album about video games.
A lot of rework was released for Pacman: Caterpillar Pac-Man (the caterpillar runs away from the spiders), Piranha (the piranha runs away from the octopuses), Lock'n'Chase (the thief runs away from the police). Especially popular was the game " Mrs. Pakman " - perhaps the first arcade game in which it was proposed to act as a female character, is also a kind of breakthrough. There was a complicated story about Mr. Pakman, Mrs. Pakman and their child, which was realized in the animated television series about how the pack-family defends the pack-land from ghosts. In the series, a whole bunch of words received the prefix “pak-”, and all the objects of the drawing world were spherical.
Pac-Man was published for the Apple II, Atari, Commodore 64, Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy. Later, of course, in various incarnations, for PC, XBox, and so on.
Related Links:
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/18288/
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