The Pac-Man game turned 40 years old

On May 22, 2020, it was exactly 40 years since the public debut of Pac-Man. It was in May 1980 that the game first appeared on arcade machines.

Since then, a minimalistic project by today’s standards about how a yellow bun eats dots and dodges ghosts has sold almost 50 million copies and earned $14 billion (mainly in arcade halls and excluding mobile).

Pac-Man is as recognizable today as it was in the late 80s. This is partly due not only to the unfading interest in the game, but also to the vivid image of the main character, who is officially the mascot of the publisher Bandai Namco.

The creator of the game is the Japanese designer Toru Iwatani (Toru Iwatani). He developed Pac-Man together with a team of 9 people when he was only 25 years old.

The project did not achieve success immediately. The fact is that it was originally made with the expectation of a new audience — women. Ivatani did not want to develop another game about war or sports, which attracted primarily men to the arcade machine.

So arcade games with Pac-Man (originally Puke-Man) did not disperse very quickly. The performance of the game did not seem outstanding, especially against the background of the crazy success of Galaxian, in which the player destroyed waves of alien ships.

The situation changed radically after the game appeared in the United States, where it began earning an amount equivalent to today’s billion dollars per quarter. Exactly how much the brand earns today is not disclosed. But it is known that the mobile version of the game has gathered an audience of 132 million people over the past five years.

Also on the topic:

• The creators of Pac-Man will open a division in IndiaPAC-MAN 256 downloaded 5 million times
• Is there any news?