Being keen to capitalise on the success seen by Pac-Man, Midway bought the rights to Crazy Otto. In a smart move, they decided to deal directly with Midway – who licensed Namco’s arcade titles for North American distribution. When they got into legal trouble with Atari – the conversion kit wasn’t officially sanctioned by the then-giant video game company – the future of the Pac-Man mod kit they were working on, Crazy Otto, was uncertain. American company General Computer Corporation had produced a mod kit which ‘enhanced’ Atari’s Missile Command, upgrading it to ‘Super Missile Attack’. Strangely, Namco weren’t responsible for the creation of Ms. General Computer Corporation and Crazy Otto Oddly, for a game that was designed to be appealing to women as well as men, the lead character and most of the antagonists (Pinky aside) were male.Ī screenshot of Crazy Otto from Time Magazine, erroneously labelled as Pac-Man (Image credit: Pacific Arcades) The four ghosts were individuals with names – Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde – and different personalities that governed how they chased the hungry, yellow player character around the maze.ĭesigner Toru Iwatani wanted to bring a less masculine, less violence focused video game to arcades in order to attract a female audience and widen the appeal of video games this approach worked wonders, with the game becoming the highest grossing arcade game of 1980 and even the fourth highest grossing game the following year, despite plenty of other titles that were released – many of which utilised the more cartoony and light-hearted style of game that Pac-Man had popularised, to varying levels of success. When Namco’s Pac-Man was released in 1980, it became a genuine pop culture phenomenon – and was one of the first games to truly give not just its protagonist tons of character, but the enemies too. Pac-Man celebrates her 40th birthday, let’s look at what led to the creation of the classic, iconic character! Pac Man features highly on Retro Dodo’s Best Arcade Games list!). Pac-Man was first released in arcades on the 13th of January 1982 – and remains one of the finest arcade games of all time (don’t just take my word for it – Ms.
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