Chubby Sunny Yellow Japanese

Japan is an amazing country. She gave the world a lot of characters and concepts, firmly included in pop culture: Pokemon and Tamagotchi, Sailor Moon and anime, samurai with ninja, sushi with rolls, Godzilla and seppuku (popularly mistakenly known as hara-kiri), karate and kimono - the list is possible continue for a long time. And how many strange things did and continue to do in Japan ...

But today we want to remember something else. More precisely, about whom. This character, about which not much is known, invented in the homeland of sake and sakura, is culturally close to Russian culture. First, he loves to eat. Secondly, in the national folklore there is one fantastic character, anatomically very similar to the proud son of the Country of Sacred Fujiyama. The hero of today is already quite an adult ... an adult being, in his prime. Today marks 35 years since the birth of the voracious Peacman.

It is difficult to find a person who is not familiar with the laconic image of a yellow bun, mouth slapping tirelessly in search of points and escaping from ghosts.
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Initially, the game, released in Japan in 1980, was called PUCK MAN (pack man). Toru Iwatani, an employee of the world famous gaming company Namco, created it for about 1.5 years. The name itself comes from the Japanese expression "paku-pakuuberu", meaning eating something, opening his mouth wide.



Surprisingly, in Japan itself, the game did not arouse enthusiasm. For 1980, she had a very unusual story, then in the fashion were all sorts of shooters (actually, as now). However, the game was saved by resourceful Americans. They repainted the slot machines (this is the year 1980, the word “game” should be understood as a “hefty box with a TV, a primitive joystick and several buttons”) in yellow, simplified drawings on the case and, most importantly, changed the name from an almost bawdy PUCK MAN on Pac-Man. In this form, the game entered the American market. Success came immediately. The audience liked the fresh plot and simple and vigorous gameplay. The developers got to the point - Pac-Man turned out to be interesting to a very wide audience of both sexes.



The popularity of the game grew rapidly, sales, too. You know the rest: packman turned into a general cultural meme, a classic of the gaming industry. For decades, it was probably played by hundreds of millions of people, the number of clones going off scale - the surest sign of popular love, as with Tetris. Pac-Man is recognized as perhaps the best game of all times and peoples, in various ratings of megahit it occupies the top lines. Even now, 35 years later, Peckman is known, remembered and loved.



And we remember. Congratulations to the glutton on his 35th birthday and we wish him always to have gunpowder in his buttocks and never to fall into ghosts.