Pac-Man

1980's Pac-Man is one of the most famous games ever made. It was innovative, unique, but above all else, iconic. With one game, Pac-Man gave the videogame industry it's very first face. We are dealing with the world's very first Mr. Videogame and even when I first played it on my Nintendo DS, even though I personally never cared much for the gameplay it offered, I couldn't deny the influence Pac-Man had on the early videogame industry. My father was living proof of that influence.

The objective in Pac-Man is fairly simple. You play as Pac-Man and the goal is to move around the maze-like environment and to collect all the dots avoiding 4 ghosts to your best ability. Every level will reset and become faster paced. The ghosts will become smarter and the music will play faster. If this was all the game had to offer, it would've been perfectly sufficient for its time. However, the game offers additional mechanics. Pac-Man has a brief chance of defending himself against the ghosts when you collect one of the bigger dots on each corner of the stage. The ghosts will become blue, slow, and actively run away from Pac-Man who can eat them to gain bonus points. Might I also mention that a fruit will appear temporarily in the center of the maze that also gives bonus points if eaten. Managing the ghosts by using the big dot sparingly is important as you only get 4 per level.

The sound effects and overall look of the game is immediately more appealing than Galaxian, showcasing Namco's improvement as a team of developers. Assisting in Pac-Man's iconography is the fact that every character has an identity. Pac-Man is of course super recognizable and iconic but the ghosts aren't just written off as insignificant enemies. Each ghost in the Ghost Gang has its own color and name. Their colors are red, blue, pink, and orange and their names are Blinky, Inky, Pinky, and Clyde. These four ghosts, along with Pac-Man himself, appear on the outside of the arcade cabinet with their more distinct and marketable designs. The sound effects, while simple and mildly annoying later on, are pleasant and have clearly resonated with audiences.

Pac-Man's legacy cannot be understated. Nearly every single platform has its own version of the original game. It has evolved into a series with many new sequels and spinoffs released to this day. The series is a merchandise powerhouse and has spawned numerous cartoons and movie cameos. Even though I may criticize the original game's punishing difficulty spikes and its gameplay as a whole, I cannot deny this game's legacy. Before Mario reinvigorated and trumped the videogame industry, Pac-Man was the most influential videogame of all time.

People need to realize how much influence this game had on literally every other single game in gaming history, it's simple, yet effective mechanics made this game one of the most fun and addictive games of our time, the basic fundamentals of this game are ingrained in literally game you encounter. Without Pac Man, we probably wouldn't have a game franchise like Mario, funnily enough Nintendo actually took the idea of the first Super Mario platformer from a quite poorly made Pac Man platformer. Like Doom, this game is quite literally a cornerstone in gaming history

I think this is about the time when Cool Japan started putting out crazy mascots to the joy of the world everywhere. Still a joy to play after 35 years.

Although I wasn't around during the time of release, I vaguely remember some trendy pubs having retro Pac-Man arcade cabinets. Additionally, I did play the game quite a bit on the Game Boy, so there is some nostalgia attached to the game. It's one of those simple games that's good to pick up and play, and it's fun to return to challenge yourself to beat your previous high score. Although it's still fun today, it's not a game you can play for long periods of time.

You guide Pac-Man around a maze, with the aim of eating all the pellets. It would be easy if you were unapposed, but you are challenged by a team of four ghosts. These ghosts start in a room in the center of the map, and each enter the maze, travelling around according to their own movement patterns. If you eat the larger Power Pellets, the ghosts slow down, begin to move away from you, and gives you the ability to munch the ghosts for a limited time. The are then temporarily sent back to the maze.

Eating ghosts gives you some decent points, especially if you eat a few in succession. After certain amount of pellets are eaten, a fruit spawns at a set position for a limited time - which also gives you a points bonus. These two facts are vital to know if you are chasing highscores.

Just thinking about a highscore is no good if you are dead. You have limited lives, so your focus should always be on survival; it is a pretty hard game. There are only 4 of the Power Pellets on a level so you need to use them wisely in order to increase your chances of survival and to gain as much points from them.

Once you eat all the pellets on the level, you will move onto the next. There's only one maze in the whole game, but the ghosts move faster and the effects of the power pellets wear off sooner with each successive round.

Pac Man feels like a game that's been around forever. I remember having this as part of the Namco Musuem collection as a kid, but I was more into Dig Dug. My mom would always talk about how she would enjoy playing Pac Man on the arcade machines in the 1980s back when she was in high school, and in a way Pac Man was the first gaming craze. This was before Mario, before Donkey Kong even, and its a game everyone in the 80s had to get their hands on, it was a fad that even had a one hit wonder written about it. The game is already getting close to being 40 years old, but people still play it and it is still considered a classic. To be honest, its not a horrible arcade game, its about collecting items while avoiding enemies in a maze, and thats the extent of the game. As you progress the enemies get seemingly quicker and the color of the screen changes along with the type of fruit, which is just for bonus points. Pac Man is really the definition of a time killer, the game has no real goal, every level is practically the same, there isn't any music, and its full of cheap deaths since the ghosts sometimes have a magic ability to corner you and trap you in. Yeah for 1980 this was revolutionary, but this hasn't aged as well as a game like Tetris or even Space Invaders.

Pacman is bigger than life! Its one of those few games that is recognizable by just about anyone. The sound and visuals were ahead pretty much everything else at the time, and they are still what make the game so enjoyable to play nowadays. That would be lyng, actually a lot of hidden game mechanics make the game really good to play. One for instance is how each of the four ghosts as a different AI that will complete each other to give a greater challenge in escaping them to the player. Its one of those games that are very simple to learn but hard to master, and thats really why it got so famous worldwide. Im not a big fan of arcade games, but i do have my fair share of fun whenever i bot this up.

The atari version is terrible though.