Nike Kidman
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On May 22, 1980, Nanmeng Palace released the first game in the "Pac-Man" series. It first landed on an arcade, and it was very popular because of its cute round face image and simple operation. Forty years later, Pac-Man has become a symbolic presence in video games, appearing in various derivative works and film and television dramas.
The 40th anniversary of the release of Pac-Man, do you know the stories behind it?
Behind this simple game that seems to be today, there are actually many advanced designs.
This simple game seems to have many advanced designs. For example, the ghosts of the four colors follow the laws of different movements, which is one of the earliest game AI. Various sequels and adaptations derived from the image of Pac-Man are "game IP" in today's words. The high-score competition for Pac-Man games also indirectly affected the birth of e-sports.
On the 40th anniversary of Pac-Man, let's review the stories behind this classic game together.
Female-oriented game with the theme of "eating"
Following the pace of "Space Invaders", a group of games with the theme of cosmic shooting emerged in the arcade hall at that time. They were often simple and exciting, which most attracted male players. Home consoles were still very luxurious products at the time, and only a small number of families owned them, so the arcade hall became the favorite place for these young people.
Due to the majority of male players, smoking, keyboard smashing, and shouting are all normal in the arcade hall, so it has also become a degenerate place in the eyes of mainstream society and adults. Video games are regarded as psychotropic drugs (today there are still people) Think so). Against this background, Nanmeng Palace decided to develop a puzzle game more suitable for the general public, especially to win the love of female players.
Pac-Man's development team is a nine-person team headed by Iwatani. It started development in early 1979 and took a year and five months to complete. At that time, it was a long development cycle. From the perspective of women, Iwatani decided to use eating as the theme of the game. The image of Pac-Man comes from a slice of pizza. Of course, this was the official statement of Nanmeng Palace and Iwatani later, probably for the North American market. Iwatani also had another explanation in an interview that the image of Pac-Man came from the distortion of the Chinese character "口".
The invincible setting comes from Popeye
The images of the four ghost enemies come from "Ghost Horse Elf" and "Q Taro". At that time, the senior executives also believed that the color of the enemy should be unified into red to avoid player mistakes. However, in the subsequent votes, the color supporters were more More, so we have today's settings. The four colors of ghosts have "different personalities": red tracks Pac-Man's position; pink will judge the direction of Pac-Man and wait for an ambush; cyan will actively set a trap between Pac-Man and Peas; yellow randomly chases Pac-Man.
Players can temporarily become invincible by eating "Dali Pill", chasing ghosts in the reverse direction. This setting is spinach from "Dali Mariner". As the level progresses, the speed of ghosts will become faster and faster, and the invincibility time of Dali Pill will be shortened until it is invalid (ghosts will still escape in the reverse direction). These settings are the earliest game AI, and the popular IO game now also draws on the reverse of Pac-Man to a certain extent.
The indirect cause of the "Atari incident"
The name of Pac-Man is also very interesting. It was originally called Puck Man. Puck means chewing in Japanese. However, in English, if you replace P with F, it is easy to be misunderstood, so it is now Pac- Man. The Pac-Man is even more popular in the North American market than in Japan. There is a special episode in Friends that tells the protagonists to fight for high scores. In 2005, Guinness named it "the most successful arcade game."
After the game is hot, it is natural to follow the trend. One of the most well-known derivative works is "Miss Pac-Man", which adds a bow and long legs to the Pac-Man as female characters. However, this game was not produced by Nanmeng Palace and was later recovered after a copyright struggle. In current terms, the image of Pac-Man can be said to be the earliest game IP. Both "Kamen Rider" and "Pixel Wars" have Pac-Man characters added. Interestingly, they also act as villains.
The successful Pac-Man series also has a "stain". When the game overlord Atari wanted to transplant it to a home machine, the imperfect version was sold directly to the player due to too much hassle. Provoked player dissatisfaction, and indirectly caused the later "Atari incident."
Of course, the later Pac-Man series appeared on almost all game platforms. On the 30th anniversary of 2010, Google collaborated with Bandai Namco to produce the first interactive Doodle. This classic game was ported to the web, retaining classic elements such as music and gameplay, and even a ritual-like investment. In the currency system, two consecutive clicks will trigger the egg to appear as a Pac-Man and play a two-player game. Playing to level 256 will trigger garbled bugs, which is also a stalk, an integer overflow from the era of 8-bit computers.
On the eve of April Fools ’Day in 2015, Bandai Namco announced the opening of copyrights to its 17 classic games, including Pac-Man, followed by April Fools’ Day and Google ’s partnership. They moved the Pac-Man game to Google Maps, the players became Pac-Man, the streets were covered with beans, and eating Dali Pill also had the opportunity to track ghosts.
Last year, KFC and Bandai Nanmeng Palace moved three classic games "Pac-Man", "Little Bee", and "Tank Wars" to WeChat mini-games. On the fortieth anniversary today, Bandai Namco and Amazon Games launched the commemorative game "PAC-MAN LIVE STUDIO", which can be played online for free on the Twitch platform and supports homemade levels.
At the time, due to technical limitations, video games were very simple in terms of gameplay, but creativity often became a "pointing pen", creating a type of gameplay with simple settings. The history of Pac-Man is almost the history of the entire video game. The meaning behind it has exceeded the game. Pac-Man is one of the symbols of video games and popular culture itself.
The 40th anniversary of the release of Pac-Man, do you know the stories behind it?
Behind this simple game that seems to be today, there are actually many advanced designs.
This simple game seems to have many advanced designs. For example, the ghosts of the four colors follow the laws of different movements, which is one of the earliest game AI. Various sequels and adaptations derived from the image of Pac-Man are "game IP" in today's words. The high-score competition for Pac-Man games also indirectly affected the birth of e-sports.
On the 40th anniversary of Pac-Man, let's review the stories behind this classic game together.
Female-oriented game with the theme of "eating"
Following the pace of "Space Invaders", a group of games with the theme of cosmic shooting emerged in the arcade hall at that time. They were often simple and exciting, which most attracted male players. Home consoles were still very luxurious products at the time, and only a small number of families owned them, so the arcade hall became the favorite place for these young people.
Due to the majority of male players, smoking, keyboard smashing, and shouting are all normal in the arcade hall, so it has also become a degenerate place in the eyes of mainstream society and adults. Video games are regarded as psychotropic drugs (today there are still people) Think so). Against this background, Nanmeng Palace decided to develop a puzzle game more suitable for the general public, especially to win the love of female players.
Pac-Man's development team is a nine-person team headed by Iwatani. It started development in early 1979 and took a year and five months to complete. At that time, it was a long development cycle. From the perspective of women, Iwatani decided to use eating as the theme of the game. The image of Pac-Man comes from a slice of pizza. Of course, this was the official statement of Nanmeng Palace and Iwatani later, probably for the North American market. Iwatani also had another explanation in an interview that the image of Pac-Man came from the distortion of the Chinese character "口".
The invincible setting comes from Popeye
The images of the four ghost enemies come from "Ghost Horse Elf" and "Q Taro". At that time, the senior executives also believed that the color of the enemy should be unified into red to avoid player mistakes. However, in the subsequent votes, the color supporters were more More, so we have today's settings. The four colors of ghosts have "different personalities": red tracks Pac-Man's position; pink will judge the direction of Pac-Man and wait for an ambush; cyan will actively set a trap between Pac-Man and Peas; yellow randomly chases Pac-Man.
Players can temporarily become invincible by eating "Dali Pill", chasing ghosts in the reverse direction. This setting is spinach from "Dali Mariner". As the level progresses, the speed of ghosts will become faster and faster, and the invincibility time of Dali Pill will be shortened until it is invalid (ghosts will still escape in the reverse direction). These settings are the earliest game AI, and the popular IO game now also draws on the reverse of Pac-Man to a certain extent.
The indirect cause of the "Atari incident"
The name of Pac-Man is also very interesting. It was originally called Puck Man. Puck means chewing in Japanese. However, in English, if you replace P with F, it is easy to be misunderstood, so it is now Pac- Man. The Pac-Man is even more popular in the North American market than in Japan. There is a special episode in Friends that tells the protagonists to fight for high scores. In 2005, Guinness named it "the most successful arcade game."
After the game is hot, it is natural to follow the trend. One of the most well-known derivative works is "Miss Pac-Man", which adds a bow and long legs to the Pac-Man as female characters. However, this game was not produced by Nanmeng Palace and was later recovered after a copyright struggle. In current terms, the image of Pac-Man can be said to be the earliest game IP. Both "Kamen Rider" and "Pixel Wars" have Pac-Man characters added. Interestingly, they also act as villains.
The successful Pac-Man series also has a "stain". When the game overlord Atari wanted to transplant it to a home machine, the imperfect version was sold directly to the player due to too much hassle. Provoked player dissatisfaction, and indirectly caused the later "Atari incident."
Create the first interactive Doodle with GoogleOf course, the later Pac-Man series appeared on almost all game platforms. On the 30th anniversary of 2010, Google collaborated with Bandai Namco to produce the first interactive Doodle. This classic game was ported to the web, retaining classic elements such as music and gameplay, and even a ritual-like investment. In the currency system, two consecutive clicks will trigger the egg to appear as a Pac-Man and play a two-player game. Playing to level 256 will trigger garbled bugs, which is also a stalk, an integer overflow from the era of 8-bit computers.
On the eve of April Fools ’Day in 2015, Bandai Namco announced the opening of copyrights to its 17 classic games, including Pac-Man, followed by April Fools’ Day and Google ’s partnership. They moved the Pac-Man game to Google Maps, the players became Pac-Man, the streets were covered with beans, and eating Dali Pill also had the opportunity to track ghosts.
Last year, KFC and Bandai Nanmeng Palace moved three classic games "Pac-Man", "Little Bee", and "Tank Wars" to WeChat mini-games. On the fortieth anniversary today, Bandai Namco and Amazon Games launched the commemorative game "PAC-MAN LIVE STUDIO", which can be played online for free on the Twitch platform and supports homemade levels.
At the time, due to technical limitations, video games were very simple in terms of gameplay, but creativity often became a "pointing pen", creating a type of gameplay with simple settings. The history of Pac-Man is almost the history of the entire video game. The meaning behind it has exceeded the game. Pac-Man is one of the symbols of video games and popular culture itself.
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