One of the most memorable moments in my childhood was the first time I played Pac-Man, I was eight years old and it was simply amazing. This would have been in 1982, and I’d been dragged down to the working men’s club in Stockport by my father where he played in their darts team; he spent his time drinking with his friends and chucking a few darts at a board, and I wandered off to find this fantastic electronic noise coming from the corner of the room where they’d placed a few arcade machines amongst the fruit machines and a cigarette machine.
There it was – a bright yellow cabinet with NAMCO written on the top in large lettering, and inside the screen there was this little yellow thing that looked like someone had bitten a chunk out of a cheese wheel, munching on dots while three colorful ghosts were chasing him round a blue maze. I’d never seen anything remotely like it before, you know? This wasn’t like the drab black and white Pong machine at the local chippy – this was the real deal – proper arcade gaming with colour, music and actual character.
I whined at my dad until he reluctantly handed over a 10p coin (it cost less to play back then, thank God) and let a teenager show me the basic rules. When it was my turn, I could hardly reach the joystick, had to bend up and hold onto that red ball on top of it while attempting to navigate the maze. I lasted maybe twenty seconds before one of those ghosts got me, however I was totally hooked. By the time my dad had finished his pints and his games, I’d nagged him into parting with a pound at the bar just so I could continue to put coins into that machine.
At the time I didn’t realise I was watching the beginnings of something huge – the first video game character to properly escape the confines of the arcade scene and transcend into mainstream culture. Pac-Man was fast becoming something that everyone could understand and get enjoyment out of – from kids like me to grown-ups with jobs who’d never set foot in an arcade before.
The brilliance of Pac-Man lay in its simplicity. It was easy to pick-up, however virtually impossible to master completely. Eat the dots, avoid the ghosts, get the power pellets when you needed to and suddenly you’re the predator rather than the prey. No complicated button combinations to remember, no instruction manual necessary – just a joystick and this instinctive chase game that anyone who’d played tag in the playground could understand. However beneath that simplicity lay a fantastically sophisticated AI system that ensured you’d keep coming back for more.
Each ghost had its own unique personality, its own individual hunting strategy that you could develop if you paid enough attention. Blinky the red one was relentless – he’d chase you straight away and never give up. Pinky would try to catch you off guard by heading towards the direction you were going to rather than where you were. Inky had a far more complex behavior pattern based on both what you and Blinky were doing. And Clyde, poor guy, would sometimes just wander off and forget what game he was meant to be playing.
Developing these behaviors became an absolute obsession for me and my mates at school. We’d spend our break times drawing out the maze layout on paper, figuring out the best route, discussing ghost behavior as if we were tactical generals. This was serious stuff – when you’re spending your dinner money on arcade games, you have to get the most out of every 10p.
By 1983, Pac-Man had totally dominated the UK’s popular culture. I had Pac-Man everything – bed sheets with the little yellow characters plastered all over them, a proper metal lunch box that I took to school with pride, stickers covering every inch of my bedroom walls. My mother purchased me this hand held electronic Pac-Man game for Christmas, one of those early LCD type things that bore about as much resemblance to the original as fish fingers do to real fish, but I liked it anyway. I used to play it under the covers with a torch after bedtime, trying to beat my previous high score.
Watching the Saturday morning cartoon was always a treat, even though it was really rubbish. Pac-Man lived in some bizarre family setup in “Pac-Land”, spoke in American accents and fought against ghost related problems that somehow required elaborate plot lines to span the entire episode. At nine years old, sitting in front of the telly watching it while I ate my breakfast was the highlight of my week. My mother wouldn’t buy me the actual Pac-Man cereal when it eventually reached British supermarket shelves – “It’s just sugar shaped like dots,” she said, which may have been a valid point but felt like a betrayal at the time.
What was impressive about Pac-Man’s success was how it drew disparate groups of people together in the arcade. Prior to Pac-Man, arcades were largely the domain of spotty teenage lads blowing their wages on Space Invaders and Asteroids. Suddenly, you’d see mums playing with their children, office workers taking a break from work, even elderly people giving it a go. The local arcade in Manchester city centre changed from being a slightly intimidating hangout spot for teenage boys to somewhere families would actually go together.
I witnessed this happening with my own family. My mother, who had previously shown zero interest in my gaming hobby, would occasionally ask to have a go at Pac-Man when we went to the arcade. She claimed it was “just to see what all the fuss was about”, but I’d catch her getting quite competitive, muttering under her breath when the ghosts caught her, developing her own strategies for the timing of the power pellets. Meanwhile, my father continued to believe that arcade games were a complete waste of money, however even he’d stop to watch when someone had a particularly good run.
That original arcade machine is the ultimate Pac-Man experience for me. There is something special about that particular feel of the joystick – neither too loose nor too stiff – and the glow of the screen in that darkened arcade area that no home version can capture. The sounds stood out above the rest of the arcade noise perfectly – that distinctive “waka-waka” munching sound and the siren wail when you picked up a power pellet. To this day, hearing those sounds instantly takes me back to being eight years old, standing on my tip-toes, completely engrossed in leading that yellow dot-eating creature through its blue maze.
When I finally received the Atari VCS version for Christmas, the disappointment was immense. Instead of the smooth, colorful characters from the arcade, we got these flickering, blocky representations. The ghosts were almost indistinguishable from each other. The sounds were feeble beeps and blips. I tried to convince myself it was still enjoyable due to it being Pac-Man at home, but even my uncritical child’s mind knew this was a poor copy of the real thing. It was like receiving a packet of Pot Noodle after ordering a Sunday Roast.
Ms. Pac-Man, when it arrived in the arcade nearest to my home the following year, was a revelation. Everything that made the original so brilliant, but with additions that improved the gameplay even further. Multiple maze designs that precluded you learning the perfect pattern. Smarter ghost AI that kept you on your toes. Those bouncy bonus fruits that added a whole new level of risk and reward. In many ways, Ms. Pac-Man was the ultimate sequel – everything the original was, plus more.
My greatest Pac-Man triumph occurred during the summer holidays of 1984. I’d spent months studying the pattern guides in arcade magazines, and practicing as often as I could scrape together enough 10p coins to feed the machine. Eventually, I managed to achieve level 18 on a single credit at the seaside arcade in Blackpool. Although I hadn’t won any official competitions or anything, the local arcade regulars began to treat me with a bit more respect after that. In the strange social hierarchy of arcade culture, achieving the late teens on Pac-Man was equivalent to passing some kind of initiation test.
I never made it to the infamous kill-screen – that mythical level 256 where the game’s programming ran out of steam and the screen turned into digital junk. That remained the territory of the true Pac-Man masters, individuals who could perform the optimal patterns with mechanical precision for hours at a time. However I did once witness someone reach it at an arcade near my cousin’s house in Liverpool. A proper crowd had formed to watch, and when the screen finally crashed, everybody applauded as if they’d just witnessed something truly historic.
With home consoles improving throughout the 80s and 90s, my relationship with Pac-Man evolved. Arcade trips were fewer and farther between as I discovered other games I enjoyed, yet Pac-Man remained a constant presence through the various home versions. Each new edition would prompt comparisons with the original arcade experience – some successfully captured more of the magic than others, but none could recreate the social aspect of those early arcade days when playing Pac-Man was more than just gaming – it was partaking in a cultural movement.
Eventually, the merchandise slowly faded from my life as I entered my teens and became embarrassed about expressing “immature” interests. Nevertheless, I never ceased playing whenever the opportunity presented itself. Throughout secondary school, college and university, whenever I found a Pac-Man machine I would play at least one game, testing whether my muscle memory for tracking the ghosts had returned.
During my twenties, during the retro gaming revival of the late 1990s, I re-discovered my passion for Pac-Man via online forums and classic gaming collections. I learned more about the game’s developer, Toru Iwatani, and his ambition to produce something appealing to both men and women – a radical concept in the male-dominated arcade world of 1980. The pizza slice inspiration for Pac-Man’s design, the balance of the gameplay mechanics, the psychological reasoning behind the ghost AI – gaining an appreciation for these design decisions gave me an even greater appreciation for the game.
My first flat had an original Pac-Man poster on the wall in the living room, a deliberate decision to include this element of my childhood in my adult identity. Friends would comment on it and we’d inevitably swap our own Pac-Man memories – the birthday party at the arcade, the rivalry with siblings, the cardboard and yellow paint costume for Halloween. Everyone had a Pac-Man story because everyone had encountered Pac-Man at some stage in their youth.
When I met my partner, she was initially confused by my enthusiasm for what she perceived as old gaming history. However, within a minute of us playing Pac-Man Championship Edition on the Xbox 360, she was hooked just as I had been all those years ago in the working men’s club. The essence of the gameplay appealed to both of us regardless of generation and initial skepticism.
Many years later, when my niece turned eight, I purchased for him one of those plug-and-play TV games containing classic arcade titles. I wasn’t certain how Pac-Man would compete with his PlayStation games and their photorealistic graphics, however I needn’t have worried. He was completely absorbed within minutes, developing his own tactics, experiencing the same frustration and elation that I remembered from my own childhood. The elegant design that captivated me in 1982 worked its magic on him in 2010.
Over the past thirty years, it has become apparent that Pac-Man has succeeded as more than just a game – it has developed into a widely recognizable icon that extends beyond its gaming roots. That simple yellow circle with a triangle-shaped mouth is as easily recognizable as any corporate logo or cartoon character. It is visually appealing at any scale, in any context and effortlessly transcends linguistic and cultural boundaries.
This visual simplicity has enabled Pac-Man to feature in every conceivable medium imaginable from Hollywood films to exhibitions in galleries, from TV adverts to graffiti on the streets. Very few video game characters have experienced the same degree of penetration into popular culture. Mario is the closest, however even he is more closely associated with his gaming origins than Pac-Man, who has evolved into a genuine pop culture icon.
Samuel’s been gaming since the Atari 2600 and still thinks 16-bit was the golden age. Between accounting gigs and parenting teens, he keeps the CRTs humming in his Minneapolis basement, writing about cartridge quirks, console wars, and why pixel art never stopped being beautiful.
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