PacMan.sc

The game was developed primarily by Namco employee Toru Iwatani over 18 months. The original title was pronounced pakku-man and was inspired by the Japanese onomatopoeic phrase paku-paku taberu, where paku-paku describes (the sound of) the mouth movement when widely opened and then closed in succession. Although it is often cited that the character's shape was inspired by a pizza missing a slice, he admitted in a 1986 interview that it was a half-truth and the character design also came from simplifying and rounding out the Japanese character for mouth, kuchi as well as the basic concept of eating. Iwatani's efforts to appeal to a wider audience beyond the typical demographics of young boys and teenagers would eventually lead him to adding elements of a maze. The result was a game he entitled Puck Man.

When first launched in Japan by Namco, the game received a lukewarm response, as Space Invaders and other similar games were more popular at the time.

The following year, the game was picked up for manufacture in the U.S. by Bally division Midway, under the altered title Pac-Man (see below). American audiences welcomed a breakaway from conventions set by Space Invaders, which resulted in unprecedented popularity and revenue that rivaled its successful predecessor, as even Iwatani was impressed with U.S. sales. The game soon became a worldwide phenomenon within the video game industry, resulting in numerous sequels and merchandising tie-ins. Pac-Man's success bred imitation, and an entire genre of maze-chase video games soon emerged.

The unique game design inspired game publishers to be innovative rather than conservative, and encouraged them to speculate on game designs that broke from existing genres. Pac-Man introduced an element of humor into video games that designers sought to imitate, and appealed to a wider demographic than the teenage boys who flocked to the action-oriented games.

Competitors and distributors were taken completely by surprise by Pac-Man's success in North America in 1980. Marketing executives who saw Pac-Man at a trade show prior to release completely overlooked the game (along with the now classic Defender), while they looked to a racing car game called Rally-X as the game to outdo that year. The appeal of Pac-Man was such that the game caught on immediately with the public; it quickly became far more popular than anything seen in the game industry before. Pac-Man outstripped Asteroids as the greatest selling arcade game of the time, and would go on to sell over 350,000 units.

The Killer List of Videogames lists Pac-Man as the #1 video game of all time on its "Top 10 Most Popular Video games" list. Pac-Man, and other video games of the same general type, are often cited as an identifying cultural experience of Generation X, particularly its older members, sometimes called Baby Busters.