Pac-Man (1980)

Pac-Man is the titular main protagonist of the Pac-Man arcade-to-videogame series where the player controls him to eat all of the power pellets in the maze while avoiding 4-colored ghosts who are his enemies known as: Blinky (Red), Inky (Blue/Cyan), Pinky (Pink) and Clyde (Orange), Pac-Man has been the longtime mascot of Namco and its successor company, Bandai Namco Entertainment. Residing in Pac-Land, he is the husband of Ms. Pac-Man, and the father of Jr. Pac-Man and Baby Pac-Man. Pac-Man regularly enjoys eating food, power pellets, pac-dots, and ghosts (his enemies.) . Pac-Man appears to be a round yellow limbless spherical creature with a giant mouth which is black from inside. . Ever since his first appearance in the eponymous arcade title in 1980, Pac-Man has become a videogame icon and is one of the most recognizable fictional characters in the world. Pac-Man, along with other videogame franchises such as Super Mario Bros and Sonic The Hedgehog have some of the highest videogame popularity in the world. . Game development began in early 1979, led by Toru Iwatani with a 9-man team. Iwatani wanted to create a game that could appeal to women as well as men, because most videogames at the time had themes that appealed to traditionally masculine interests, such as war or sports. Although the inspiration for the Pac-Man character was the image of a pizza with a slice removed, Iwatani has said he rounded out the Japanese character for mouth, kuchi. The in-game characters were made to be cute and colorful to appeal to younger players. The original Japanese title was Puck-Man, which refers to gobbling something up; the title was changed to Pac-Man for the North American release due to fears of vandals defacing cabinets by converting the P into an F, as in the F-Word. . Pac-Man was a widespread critical and commercial success, leading to several sequels, merchandise, 2 TV Shows, and a hit single. The character of Pac-Man has become the official mascot of Namco.