As seen on Artstation, Italian artist Patrizio Spadoni worked on the UI for the mobile version of Pac-Man circa 2020.
Interesting to note is the use of green and purple in the 40th Anniversary theming - suggesting Sue and Funky would have been represented with the other ghosts.
Ironically, the franchise would go on to lend its branding to a variety of casino games and simulations, as well as lottery tickets.
In an interview with Cassidee Moser of IGN, Toru Iwatani recalled being approached about using the Pac-Man license for a casino game.
He immediately shot this idea down on account of Pac-Man being a children's character, which wouldn't be appropriate for casinos.
You can select a Pac-Man vinyl for your car in the 2004 game, Street Racing Syndicate.
The vinyl is even left intact in the 2014 Steam re-release, which is published by Funbox Media instead of Bandai Namco.
When Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's "EVERYONE IS HERE!" banner was first unveiled, Pac-Man was positioned between Ganondorf and Shulk.
As of Sora's reveal, he and Dark Samus have been moved next to Donkey Kong. This puts him closer to the middle of the overall picture.
Prior to Catalog IP's official unveiling in 2016, Bandai Namco hosted a game jam a year prior that about 60 people participated in.
Games such as Pac-Rogue, Stealth Pac-Man, Amazing4, etc, were created specifically for the game jam, and have never been released to the public.
To commemorate the inclusion of stickers in iMessage, Bandai Namco released Pac-Man Moving Stickers for iOS devices in 2016.
These little animated images of Pac-Man and the ghosts could be attached to text messages.
To promote the movie, One Piece Stampede, 500,000 theatergoers were granted access to a webgame named One Piece Pac-Man Stampede Ver.
The game was active from August 23rd 2019 to November 22nd 2019, and featured 5 levels of play with 8 bonus "fruits" to grab.
(Video capture by Natsuki Ninomiya)
The moniker "Toc-Man" is a little more than just a play on the Pac-Man name.
It also pays homage to Namcot, Namco's old home console division; without the dash in the middle, "Tocman" is "Namcot" spelled backwards.
On October 13, 1981, PM Magazine Chicago aired a television report known as "Pac-Mania Invades Chicago"
The coverage elaborated on the revolutionary success of Pac-Man as well as all the moving parts (gameplay and machine mechanisms alike) that make the game tick.
The original Namco Museum series for Playstation is unique in that there are dedicated rooms you can look around in for each game included.
The rooms you are seeing here are for Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, and Pac-Land, respectively.
Under normal circumstances, it's impossible to see Pac-Man collide with Blinky onscreen during the first intermission of the original game.
If you were to play a modified version of Pac-Man that speeds Pac up, though, you can see Pac-Man moves past Blinky and wraps around the screen when he's big.
At the beginning of Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, players are given the option to pick their favorite NES or Famicom game from virtually the entire licensed library.
This includes Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, and Pac-Land.
It is established in the film Wreck-It Ralph that Clyde hosts a support group for video game villains named Bad-Anon, which is held in the ghosts' base.
The room also appears to be used for Zangief's book club in Ralph Breaks the Internet.
Interestingly, the description for Pac-Man on the NES Switch Online app mentions the game released in 1988 - which was when Tengen first published the version in the USA.
Usually, re-releases refer to the 1993 release year, which was when Namco published it themselves for NES.
NEWS:
If you somehow have yet to possess access to a copy of Pac-Man on your Nintendo Switch, the NES version of the game has now been added to the console's online service.
Other Namco NES / Famicom titles joining in include Mendel Palace and The Tower of Druaga.
An American TV advert for the 1998 Playstation title, Pitfall 3D: Beyond the Jungle, depicts Pac-Man as a crotchety old man while he watches gameplay in a barber shop with other envious classics.
Ironically, Pac-Man World would release one year later.
@playstationpark.bsky.social
The Ms. Pac-Man / Galaga "Class of 1981" arcade cabinet secretly contains the original Pac-Man as a third game you can play on it.
To access Pac-Man, press Up, Up, Up, Down, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left on the joystick. The onscreen Blinky will change into Pinky to confirm the input.
Please note:
This gameplay was captured using an emulator, so there may be audio/video hiccups here that wouldn't be present when playing on a genuine DS.
There are many hidden gestures the player can activate by drawing them in Pac-Pix's sketchbook mode.
However, one of these can only be performed in the Japanese version; if a line shaped like a butt is drawn successfully, an orange cloud will come out and make an explosion sound.
Puckman Pockimon Genie 2000 is a strange bootleg arcade game where two players control Pac-Man and Pikachu as they team up to (while competing for the higher score) eat all of the dots in the maze while avoiding enemies.
Clearing mazes rewards players with...portraits of unnamed women.
Super GPS Pac-Man was Namco's first attempt at a Pac-Man game that made use of real-world locales. It was made for Bandai's WonderSwan Color, and used a GPS peripheral known as WonderGate.
WonderGate, however, never saw the light of the day. Super GPS Pac-Man also got canned with it.
NEWS:
Another round of Pac-Man World 2: Re-Pac figures are prepped to debut via Gashapon machines starting on April 5th in Japan.
The new figures are of Pac-Man wearing hats resembling each of the ghosts. Interestingly, this includes Orson, giving him a rare appearance in merchandising.
In 2016, a unique version of Pac-Man was released in the form of a skill-based gambling game via an iOS app named Sparcade.
Sparcade was built as a platform a la Xbox Live Arcade but with the intention of having players bet against each other for real money.
The Xbox 360 version of Pac-Man Championship Edition can be found on the Xbox Live Arcade Compilation Disc as one of several playable games included.
This release is often bundled with the 360 version of SEGA Superstars Tennis.
Happy April Fool's day!
At one point, Pac-Man World was considered to be delayed to 2000 to add extra polish - namely to rebalance the Anubis Rex boss.
However, Namco insisted it release in 1999 to avoid competing with another Crash Bandicoot-inspired platformer starring a round yellow character, M&Ms: The Lost Formulas.
Japanese text from an interview with Toru Iwatani hosted by the Hitotsubashi University Innovation Research Center. A:そのとおりです。『ミズパックマン』はそれをやっちゃったんですね。だから･･･。 Q:当初のコンセプトからは、もう違っちゃってると。 A:「やめてくれ」って言ったんですけども駄目でした。難しそうに見えたんですが、あれもヒットしちゃったんですよね。
Text from an interview with Toru Iwatani hosted by the Hitotsubashi University Innovation Research Center, machine translated to English with DeepL. A: Exactly. *Ms. Pac-Man* ended up doing just that. So... Q: So it ended up deviating from the original concept. A: I told them, “Please don’t do that,” but it didn’t work. It looked difficult, but it ended up being a hit too.
At that, Iwatani was not the biggest fan of the filled-in colored walls Ms. Pac-Man featured.
(Special thanks to @h17e8.bsky.social for providing the source material for today's fact!)
Japanese text from an interview with Toru Iwatani hosted by the Hitotsubashi University Innovation Research Center. A: いいえ、四方だけ。斜めに行くとコントロールしにくくなってしまうので、上下左右に動くようにするには、必然的にああいう迷路になるんです。 Q: 斜めに動かす技術自体は、ハード的には可能だったんですか? 岩谷:全然問題なかったです。もう『ギャラクシアン』でやってましたので。要は、迷路ゲームにしたくなかったんですね。迷路ゲームって言われると、何だかそれだけで難しそうに思われてしまいますので。ですから『パックマン』は、迷路の壁が中抜きのネオンサインのような色になっているんです。黒に近い青にして、目に飛び込まないようにスッと黒に落として、迷路に見えないようにしたんですね。 Q:なるほど。逆に言うと、例えば青じゃなくて白くすると、壁が際立っちゃって迷路感が出るっていうことですね?
Text from an interview with Toru Iwatani hosted by the Hitotsubashi University Innovation Research Center, machine translated to English with DeepL A: No, just in four directions. Moving diagonally makes it hard to control, so to allow movement up, down, left, and right, it inevitably ends up looking like that kind of maze. Q: Was the technology to move diagonally actually possible from a hardware standpoint? Iwatani: It wasn’t a problem at all. We’d already done it in *Galaxian*. Basically, we didn’t want it to be a maze game. When people hear “maze game,” they tend to think it sounds difficult just based on that alone. That’s why in *Pac-Man*, the maze walls are colored like neon signs with hollowed-out sections. We used a blue close to black, blending it smoothly into black so it wouldn’t jump out at the eye, making it look less like a maze. Q: I see. In other words, if you used white instead of blue, for example, the walls would stand out and give it that maze-like feel, right?
As part of simplifying Pac-Man's play control, the iconic neon maze was invented to prevent the usage of diagonal movement.
However, Toru Iwatani didn't want Pac-Man to be perceived as a "maze game"; the blue wall color wasn't filled in to keep the player's eyes drawn to the game objects.
As part of their Corn Maze and Pumpkin Festival in 2017, an Idaho farm known as The Farmstead created an 18-acre Pac-Man corn maze split into several phases.
