![]() ![]() Pac-Man, which were created in the United States by Midway. : You weren't involved with games like Ms. ![]() We wondered, what should we do? And decided to change it to "Pac." Then, after the American version came out with the "Pac" spelling, we used that for the entire world. That was pretty much just changing a few numbers in the program code. There wasn't a lot of time before the game was to be released in July, so we just tweaked the game balance, the difficulty level. Iwatani: The design didn't change very much. : What did you change about the game after the location test? At that time, what was popular overseas were more thrilling games, and I felt that perhaps the rhythm of Pac-Man wasn't matching the needs of overseas users. and Europe would take it up, because it's a rather slow relaxing game. So we didn't think it would be a major hit. It's not like people sat around and played the machine all day, though. But it was for people who didn't play games on a daily basis – women, children, the elderly. On the other hand, the core gamers, the men, were not necessarily very excited about it. They played it, and they were more or less satisfied – they figured out how to play it. They came up to it and put their hands on it, so we thought that our target concept had been very much in sync and correct. The women and couples were very happy about the machine, very excited. On the top floor, there was a very long, narrow room where the couples, having just seen movies, would go up to have a little enjoyment before they returned home. It was a thin, chimney-shaped building with seven or eight floors, consisting of several movie theaters. The game was taken to a building in Shibuya that no longer exists. Since this was the first time the machine was shown to the general public, we consider May 22 to be Pac-Man's "birthday." After that, we made revisions and improvements based on the results of the location test and it was released in July. The game was still under development, and we were gauging the reaction of consumers. Iwatani: May 22 wasn't the launch date, it was the first location test. In Japan, dolls like Hello Kitty are deformed into a different shape, into an animal that doesn't really exist. This was not popular in the U.S., as you know, they wanted real proportional humans. They wanted games that simulated the real world, whereas Japan wanted otogibanashi (fairy tales).Īlso, when you look at Japanese games, the characters may be deformed in such a way that their heads are half of their total height. In North America at the time, the games were about car races or warfare. Even within animation, they want characters that are the products of the writer's imaginations. Iwatani: Japanese youngsters really wanted "ghost" type characters – not necessarily modeled on creatures, but things that don't really exist in this world. : What about Pac-Man would you say came from a Japanese aesthetic, specifically? The game idea – eating a power cookie and powering up to defeat the ghosts – was inspired by Popeye eating spinach and defeating Bluto, turning the tables on him. The ghosts were inspired by Casper, or Obake no Q-Taro. Pac-Man is inspired by all the manga and animation that I'd watch as a kid. : Did you take inspiration from Japanese animation or manga? I think there was some recognition that this was the future of videogames, because this was the first character that was introduced at the time. The colors of the maze walls are muted, so you can see the character designs. Even if the character was an enemy, they wouldn't be able to hate it. The second point was the design – the character design and the graphic design were very appropriate for women, who thought it was very cute. One point of differentiation was to target women gamers. ![]()
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