How a little yellow circle with eyes shaped the video-game world and way in which I was introduced to it.
And now we arrive at an inevitable moment: the time in which it's necessary for me to talk about Pac-Man, the enormously influential arcade classic that played as big a role as any in bringing me into the world of video games and inspiring me to become an enthusiast.
Pac-Man came onto the scene roughly one year before I played my first video game, and in that intervening period, it managed to change the entire video-game landscape. It wasn't just a video game, no; it was the video game. It was a monumental work whose ideas were so groundbreaking and so transformative that they served to influence every game developer, every gaming company, and, really, just about every person in the video-game industry. It was the most popular and most successful video game of all time. Everyone had heard of it, and nearly everyone had played it. It was ubiquitous. And let me tell you: It sparked the biggest craze the industry had ever known!
So yeah--you could say that Pac-Man was a pretty big deal.
To fully appreciate what it did for the medium, all you have to is consider its contributions: It popularized the maze-game genre and did so on a massive scale. It inspired companies to create gaming mascots and build multiple IPs around them. It inspired the creation of many new game-types and also countless clones, all of which came to proliferate within and thus dominate every gaming space: arcades, consoles and home computers (unfortunately, though, the majority of the clone games were nothing more than poor-quality rip-offs that were pumped out, quite shamelessly, by companies that were only interested in making a quick buck). It brought millions of people into the gaming scene. And it made a whole lot of companies rich!
This round yellow fellow was literally everywhere I looked!
The arrival of Pac-Man and the subsequent boom it triggered worked to bring about revolutionary change and therein give rise to new genres and new ideas: maze-style games; action games built around specially designed mascot characters (those who were, like Pac-Man, cutesy and cartoony); and single-screen platformers. It shook up the entire industry and guided it into a new era--one in which the medium's largest-ever expansion occurred.
And that's what the world of video games looked like when I stepped into it. (If you want to read about my initial experiences with video games, specifically, then kindly check out my other Atari 2600-related Memory Bank pieces.)
As for my personal introduction to Pac-Man--the game that brought the industry to that state--though? Well, that event took place in the summer of 1981, when I was three years old.
At the time, my immediate family and I were on vacation in Florida. I don't remember all of the details of the trip because it occurred during a time in life when I was still developing my declarative memory--during a phase in which my brain could only retain fragmented images. So, really, I only remember a few things: I recall that (a) it was a week-long vacation; (b) we visited Disneyland a few times; and (c) at some point a kid I befriended at our hotel's indoor-pool area pushed me, from behind, into the pool's deep end, and his father had to dive in and save me from drowning (my lasting image of the event is the man's face torpedoing toward me as I flailed helplessly and sank). Why he pushed me, I don't know; it might be that kids aged 3-5 are just a little bit psychotic.
And I remember one other thing about our stay in Florida: It was the place in which I had my very first arcade experience. There was an arcade hall somewhere in proximity to our hotel's lobby, and I followed my brother, James, into it. The hall was a large, noisy space wherein there stood several giant wooden cabinets, each of which contained an embedded screen that I could barely see from my low point of view. The cabinets' control panels were high up, too; they were so out of my reach that I had to stand on milk crates in order to access them (arcades always had those colored milk crates laying around every corner because their owners didn't want tykes to miss out on the fun; or, rather, they correctly identified that small kids are conduits that lead directly to grown people's quarter-filled pockets).
I have no specific memory of what I played that day (or any other day that week), but I do recall laying eyes on a fairly new arrival whose cabinet was colored bright yellow and featured what I perceived to be demonic-looking bug-eyed blob. And this "blob," for some reason, was being menaced by an angry-looking blue ghost. I wasn't able to ascertain what, exactly, the game was about, no, but I made sure to take note of its name: It was called "Pac-Man." I wouldn't forget it.
Sadly, though, it would be two years before I'd get the chance to actually interact with a Pac-Man machine. That's how long it was before I began following my brother to local arcades. It was only then, when I was 5 years old, that I started to become an arcade-goer.
Even then, I'm happy to say, I didn't miss out on experiencing the world-changing classic when it was at its most relevant, no. I did indeed have myself a fated meeting with Pac-Man. It was just that the meeting in question happened somewhere else.
It was unbelievable to me that a home version of Pac-Man existed and that I was currently holding it in my hands. "You mean ... this game that everyone's talking about," I thought to myself in amazement, "I can play it right now, without leaving the house?!"
So immediately I inserted the cartridge into the 2600, and then I proceeded to play Pac-Man for about a half hour or so.
Now, maybe it was because I was in my formative years--a time in life when everything seemed so magical--but I was quite astonished by what 2600 Pac-Man was showing me. I remember thinking that it didn't look all that different from the arcade original (or, rather, from the mental images I'd formed of the arcade original).
Honestly, I liked it a lot. Both then and in all of my proceeding sessions, I had a great time with 2600 Pac-Man. Never once did I feel as though I was playing a "terrible version of Pac-Man" or moreover some horrible abomination whose release served to destroy the entire industry. No--I thought it was fine. It looked like Pac-Man, and, apparently, it played just like it. That was all that mattered to me.
Even today I hold to the opinion that it's not a terrible version of Pac-Man. It has its obvious shortcomings, yes, but, still, it plays just fine. All of the core Pac-Man elements are there (even if they're only semi-adequately replicated), and the chomp-and-evade action is pretty faithful.
And if we're talking about games that caused serious damage to the industry's reputation, then I can think of far bigger culprits than 2600 Pac-Man. I can say with confidence that 2600 Pac-Man is nowhere near as guilty as Hall of Shamers like those wretched porn games; the dozens of mediocre Pac-Man and Spaces Invaders clones; the deceptively produced reskins of popular games like Megamania and Demon Attack; or all of the cynically developed shovelware that flooded the console. Compared to all of them, 2600 Pac-Man is a top-level video game.
I admit that 2600 Pac-Man isn't a particularly attractive-looking game and that in many ways it does a poor job of replicating the arcade original's visuals. Its color-scheme is comparatively drab; it has ugly thin dashes in place of dots; a plain concentric square replaces all of the different fruit/item types; and because the 2600 runs games at such a low resolution (160x192p compared to arcade Pac-Man's 224x288p), the maze has been necessarily compressed (especially along the vertical axis), and consequently the maze's layout has been altered to where it hardly resembles the arcade version's. And, yeah, the game's OAM and palette-memory issues cause the type of sprite flickering that makes the game look visually unstable (the flickering problem is so bad that I'm unable to capture an image in which more than one ghost appears). But even then, I maintain that 2600 Pac-Man is nowhere near as bad as people say it is. No--it's just as functional and as playable as any decent 2600 game.
I look at it like this: Had the arcade original never existed, and the 2600 version was instead Namco's first Pac-Man game, people might have seen things in a different light. It may very well have been the case that 2600 Pac-Man was the game they came to regard as the era's most groundbreaking, most transformative work!
Stop laughing.
It was easily the best version of Pac-Man I'd ever played. For certain it trumped all of the other versions in terms of visuals and sound design. Its colors were pleasingly bright; its mazes' walls had a rich neon glow to them; and its characters moved smoothly and fluidly and with a surprising amount of animation. The distinctive sounds that emanated from its speakers also did a whole lot to set it apart; the ambient alarm noises, the pellet-eating's wonderfully melodic wakka-wakka sound effect, and the satisfying sounds of ghost- and item-consumption were able to do what the home versions' comparably spiritless sounds weren't: utterly engross me and help me to form a visceral connection to the action.
Those sounds also did much to help Pac-Man stand out from other arcade games. Because they were so sonorous and so reverberant, they were able to rise above the arcade cacophony and reach your ear no matter how far away you were. If there was a Pac-Man machine in the arcade you just entered, you'd know it right way; you'd hear its sounds, and doubtlessly you'd feel inclined to let them guide you to their source.
In time, these sounds became as iconic as the game itself.
It was all of these qualities that made arcade Pac-Man's feel like the only true Pac-Man experience. And because it made that impression on me and did so in such a powerful way, I'd come see its home conversions as lesser products--as nothing but pale imitations. Each console and computer port, for one reason or another, now fell way short in my eyes.
Arcade Pac-Man was tops.
How I played it then was how I'd continue to play it in the future. I'd always employ the same strategy: clear out the lower-left corner, away from which the ghosts would travel at the start, then move clockwise and do the same in each of the other three corners; and make sure that the Power Pellet is the last thing I eat before transitioning over to the next corner. Basically I'd separate the map into quadrants and deal with each one individually.
Oh, and if anyone was looking on, I'd make it a priority to pretend that I was one of those Pac-Man savants who had the ghost monsters' patterns all figured out. And if ever I got cornered and chomped, I'd do that thing where you point toward the screen with an open palm and put on a "Can you believe that?" expression. You know--just to let the onlookers know that the game cheated and that I wouldn't have failed otherwise. Because the most important thing is to retain your dignity.
In actuality, I was pretty good at Pac-Man. On my best day, I could make it 13-15 mazes in--all the way up to the mazes that were amazingly nerve-wracking because their Power Pellets were completely ineffectual--on a single credit. Around then, it became near-impossible to survive for longer than a few seconds.
And that's the way it went: Whenever I'd come across a Pac-Man machine, I'd make sure to pop in a quarter and then try to survive as long as I could on a single credit. Honestly, I don't remember if my motivation was to try to set a high score or to simply to advance farther than I did in my previous attempt. All I know for certain is that the game had a way of calling to me. And when it did, I'd gravitate toward it, and I'd be ever-receptive to its message--to its silent enticement, which said, "Come on--just give it one try. You know you want to."
And each time, Pac-Man would provide me minutes-worth of solid entertainment--of highly engrossing, reliably fun arcade action. It could always be counted upon to do that job.
That's what made it the perfect arcade game.
Pac-Man was an amazingly successful game, so it's not surprising that Namco was quick to build off of its popularity and bring to market a number of Pac-Man sequels. Though, for a variety of reasons, none of them were able to supplant the original. Even those that performed very well--like Ms. Pac-Man, which was a consistent chart-topper, and Pac-Land, which also saw a lot of commercial success (and in addition, it came to be regarded as one of the medium's most influential platformers)--weren't able to touch it, and they didn't come close to making the same landscape-changing impact. And over time, because Namco could never quite recapture the magic of its original work, Pac-Man sequels began to perform worse and worse; and as an unfortunate result of Namco's pumping out one underperforming Pac-Man sequel after the next, the "Pac-Man" name came to be associated with failure.
That, to me, is one of the saddest things that has ever happened to a video-game franchise. It's almost criminal, really, how badly Namco has mishandled the series over the last 30 years. I mean, how do you not go out of your way to protect one of the medium's most legendary characters? How is it possible to misuse him that many times? And how much of a shame is it that consequently Pac-Man is now thought of as nothing but a "silly relic from a long-dead era"? That's no way for a gaming legend to be remembered. It's not right that people treat him as though he were an old, disease-riddled has-been whose very presence serves to drag down the value of any product with which it's associated (recall what used to happen whenever someone would so much as suggest that Pac-Man appear in a Super Smash Bros. game; so-called "enthusiasts" would respond to the idea with revulsion).
I'm not saying that all of the sequels are bad, no. There are certainly some gems in there. The problem is that the games' wildly varying quality and Namco's negligent handling of the property have combined to create the perception that Pac-Man isn't really all that important to the company anymore, which is unfathomable considering that he's by far its all-time biggest moneymaker! How the company treated the Pac-Man World series, in particular, demonstrates what I'm talking about: The first two entries are great; they're fun, inventive platformers into which the developers clearly put a lot of care. But then, for some reason, Namco decided to farm out the third entry to the less-than-reputable Blitz Games, which, predictably, produced a middling product.
And that's been the pattern: Namco comes up with a great idea. It finds success with said idea. And then, inexplicably, it tosses out a half-heartedly produced follow-up and kills its own momentum.
Maybe I'm being too hard on the company, though. Maybe the truth is that Namco is a victim of its own success--that it created the perfect video game right from the jump and thus left itself no room to meaningfully improve upon the formula. And so the only thing it could do was endlessly iterate on what was an already-perfect work.
I don't know.
What I can say for certain, though, is that the original Pac-Man is still as loved by the masses as it was back in 1980. Its popularity has endured through multiple eras, including those in which edginess, extreme violence and graphical realism were just about the only things the industry seemed to value. Even when the market was dominated by immensely sized, graphically intense big-budget blockbusters, Pac-Man was still there, delighting audiences with its engrossing chomp-and-evade, maze-style action and thus continuing to demonstrate that the best ideas never grow old.
Hell--you're still likely to come across a vintage Pac-Man machine in any arcade you visit, be it a modern-game-focused arcade, a barcade, a family-entertainment center, or a party-themed establishment. And surely you'll observe that people of all ages are gravitating toward it.
And through the decades, the Pac-Man character has managed to maintain its cultural relevance. His likeness can still be seen everywhere--in both physical and digital spaces. His original work is still referenced in movies, books and other video games. And the sounds from his games can be heard on various websites, in sports arenas, and in just about every other entertainment space. Even up until around 2010, sound effects from 2600 Pac-Man could still be heard in movies and television shows, wherein they were used to represent the sounds of whichever video game was being played; this may point more toward studio executives being desperately out of touch with the mainstream, yeah, but still it serves as evidence that Pac-Man is popular even with people who don't know much about video games. And because Pac-Man is so well-known to both enthusiasts and the average person, it has come to be associated with the medium, itself. To the world at large, Pac-Man is video games.
Of course, I, too, continue to enjoy me some Pac-Man. I play it on a regular basis and do so wherever I am. When I'm upstate visiting my father, I make sure to spend some time with the Pac-Man 25th Anniversary Edition arcade machine that occupies his house's game room (along with a pool table and a slot machine!) and have myself the most authentic of Pac-Man experiences. And when I'm at home, I'll load up the Nintendo Switch version of Namco Museum and play a few rounds of Pac-Man as I listen to the basketball game or a Twitch stream. And each time I play it, it's able to do the same job it's been doing since day one: providing me several minute's worth of reliably fun, satisfying arcade action.
That's what I expect from it, and that's what it always delivers.
So yeah--Pac-Man has always had a strong presence in my life. In my earliest days, I spent many an hour playing the Atari 2600 and arcade versions of it. When new platforms like the ColecoVision and the NES came into my life, so, too, did their versions of the game. For a time, I was lucky enough to own one of Coleco's cool miniature Pac-Man machines (which my careless brother predictably broke). And over the last three decades, I've been returning to the arcade original on a regular basis. That tells you all you need to know about the staying power of Pac-Man.
And it's for certain that Pac-Man is going to retain that power. Decades from now, I bet, I'll still be returning to it. And no doubt I'll still be deriving great entertainment from Namco's unparalleled arcade classic.
And that's the way it should go for the granddaddy of them all.
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