Pac-Man simultaneously using the W-A-S-D keys. The first player controls Pac-Man using the arrow keys while a second player can control Ms. Despite Pac-Man's popularity, no official explanation has ever been provided by Namco as to why Pac-Man has to run around a maze, gobble the pellets, and avoid the ghosts.īetween Friday 21st and Sunday 23rd May 2010, Google celebrated Pac-Man's 30 birthday by supplying their first ever interactive Google Doodle a Google inspired Pac-Man maze that can actually be played by one or two people. His legacy continues on the latest generation platforms with ever-expanding adventures, and while they capture the good-natured quality of our little yellow hero, they can never outshine the accomplishment of the original games. While Pac-Man's popularity has died down these days (in comparison to the early Eighties), he is still a recognizable figure, and has appeared on just about every form of merchandising available. From that point onward, Pac-Man has gone on to grace just about every video game system that has ever been manufactured in some form or another, including the Wii Virtual Console. However, they did produce a far better conversion for their home computer systems and the Atari 5200 (if you can overlook the controls). Pac-mania became a phenomenon and video games' first mascot was met with an insatiable demand.Ītari snapped up the rights to bring the arcade hit home, and let down millions of fans with a sub-par conversion on what was their most popular home system at the time, the Atari 2600. Pac-Man's game play was a stark and refreshing contrast to the space aged shoot'em ups that were popular at the time. After being overlooked by 'experts' who judged Namco's own Rally-X to be the better of the two games, Pac-Man went on to unprecedented success and became an icon in Japan and in America. It was designed by Toru Iwatani, who had previously designed the Gee Bee trilogy, and was the first Namco game to incorporate a four-way joystick. Any closer and it will retreat to the bottom left corner.Inspired over a lunch of pizza, Pac-Man (originally entitled Puckman in Japanese) began life in the arcades in 1980.

An apprehensive pursuer, Clyde will chase until it is within eight spaces of Pac-Man. With this in mind, you can manipulate Pinky into heading down a non-threatening path.Ĭlyde: The orange ghost move based on its proximity to Pac-Man. Moving upward causes Pinky to target four spaces ahead but also four spaces to Pac-Man's left. With careful planning, you can exploit Pinky's anticipation.

Pinky: The pink ghost is a strategizer, chasing to a position four spaces ahead of Pac-Man.

Essentially, the closer Blinky gets to the player, the closer Inky will approach. Inky opts for a space in front of Pac-Man that is also twice the distance between Pac-Man and Blinky. Inky: The blue ghost moves the most erratically, basing its location on both Pac-Man's and Blinky's movements. But watch out - Blinky's speed and focus increase when you're down to your last 20 and 10 dots. Blinky: The simplest enemy to understand, the red ghost targets Pac-Man in chase mode unrelentingly until it switches to scatter mode and returns to its corner.

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