Five Fun Facts: Pac-Man Edition!
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls... The second month of Pinfinity+ is here, and it's a retro throwback classic of epic proportions as we're featuring Pac-Man in December's WAKKA WAKKA themed drop! We couldn't be more excited to bring you one of the biggest names in gaming history in this month's Pinfinity+
For this week's blog, we're looking at all things Pac-Man and giving you our Five Fun Facts all about everyone's favorite arcade classic!
When Pac-Man was first released out west, it had a very slight difference in its name: Puck-Man. The original Japanese name came from the word "paku", which means "chomp" or "eat". However... Puck-Man got some rather unsavory comparisons to a certain swear word that's quite popular here in America, so they decided to make the change to Pac-Man!
There actually is an ultimate high score possible when playing Pac-Man, and that requires some pretty ridiculous skill: one must have a completely perfect game - which means never losing a life, eating every dot, every fruit, and eating every ghost... For 255 straight levels! And once you've completed the perfect game and achieve a maximum high score of 3,333,360 points, the game would actually glitch out and crash. A bit anti-climactic, we agree, but a tremendous feat nonetheless!
Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani was quoted as saying that arcades were a "playground for boys, dirty and smelly. So we wanted to include more female gamers so it would become cleaner and brighter". Clearly his plan was successful, as arcades absolutely blew up in the early 80s, and Pac-Man was a huge part of this surge of popularity. 40 years later, after its release in May of 1980, Pac-Man is arguably the most recognizable figure in gaming history.
BONUS FACT: Did you know that Pac-Man is in the Guinness Book of World Records? That's right! It is officially the "Most Recognizable Video Game Character", as nearly 95% of all Americans were easily able to recognize Pac-Man, more-so than any other video game character in history!
Pac-Man is known for being a fun and exciting platformer, but while it's charm and character are some of its hallmarks, it's gameplay and difficulty were way ahead of its time! Not many people know that each of the four ghosts (named Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde) had their own unique "Enemy AI", or artificial intelligence, that could make them unpredictable when navigating the levels. Inky would chase their character no matter where they went, Blinky and Pinky would always attempt to chase the character "from the front", and Clyde... Clyde was the tough cookie, as his AI was designed to be completely random, seeing him change course abruptly - often being the main culprit for lost games!
Back in 2010, Google celebrated Pac-Man's then-30th anniversary by creating a playable version of the game on the Google homepage. A corporate time management company did a study following Google's Pac-Man game, and discovered that nearly 5 MILLION WORK HOURS were spent by employees playing Pac-Man. Now, while it's impressive that Pac-Man has stood the test of time, I imagine most of those offices and companies would have liked some of those working hours back...
And there you have it! Five Fun Facts for one of the most iconic and historic names in gaming and entertainment, Pac-Man! If you're ready to sign up for that WAKKA WAKKA drop, or you want more information about Pinfinity+, head over to pins.ar/join today!
