Jap pac man ghost names license#

Previous games dealing with a maze playfield, such as Atari’s Gotcha (1973) and Sega’s Head-On (1979), have failed to cement the maze-game as a solid avenue for arcade success. Mullane amazingly declines the offer, calling the game “silly”.

Jap pac man ghost names license#

With its distribution deal with Namco via Galaxian, Bally/Midway has the first option to license the game for the US, but freshly appointed Bally Manufacturing president Robert E. The game is an absolute smash in Japan, following Space Invader‘s lead in causing another Yen shortage nationwide as tens of thousands of Puckman machines start gobbling them up.

Tension is added with a steady whining sound effect that increases in pitch as the game is played. However, with each successive screen, the ghosts get faster and their time of blue-invulnerability less. The arcade game is deceptively simple, with only a four-position joystick needed to guide the character around the maze, Iwatani’s nod to newcomers to the arcade and women who might not be familiar with video games. Considering the graphic design of the game, one wonders if perhaps Iwatani and Mokajima have played the 1975 German board game Blockade, the cover art of which bears a striking resemblance to their game. During every screen, a treat appears for the player under the ghost-cage, in the form of fruit or a bell or some other symbol waiting to be devoured. In each corner of the square playfield is a large dot that when eaten will turn the ghosts blue for a brief period, during which time the tables turn and Puck can eat the ghosts, leaving only the apparently indigestible eyes which make their way back to the cage for reincarnation into another ghost. After the jaunty Puckman tune, players find themselves guiding Puckman around a single maze eating dots, while avoiding the four ghosts Akabei, Pinky, Aosuke, and Guzuta (each with varying levels of hunting skills), who escape from a cage in the middle of the screen and will end our little yellow friend’s life if they touch him. Kai is credited with only one other game as composer: Namco’s other maze game for 1980, Rally-X. Gaming history is heralded by the distinctive theme music that plays at the beginning of a new maze in Puckman, composed by Toshio Kai. Toru Iwatani, creator of Pac-Man, undated photo The large wedge of a mouth does remain, though, and the character and game is christened Puckman, deriving from the Japanese term “puck”, translating to “munch” in English. Technological restraints at the time, however, require the programming team, led by Hideyuki Mokajima, to do a graphics scale-back to a simple, solid yellow circle. Inspired by the sight of a pizza with a slice taken, his original design calls for an animated pizza with a missing wedge for a mouth running around a maze eating everything in sight.

He wants to create an arcade game that looks more like a cartoon than a video game and appeals to women as well as men. By 1980, he is tired of the glut of videogame shoot-em-ups littering the arcades, even those by his own company such as Galaxian. Caught in the transition to videogames, Iwatani bridges the gap by creating 3 interesting video pinball games: Gee Bee (1978), Bomb Bee (1979) and Cutie Q (1979). In 1977, Toru Iwatani joins Namco, initially intending to make pinball games for the company. Standard, Mini-Myte and Cocktail cabinets shown