Pac-Man Celebrates 30th Anniversary
It’s been 30 years since the introduction of the arcade classic Pac-Man–a game that became an icon of the 1980s and succeeded in bringing videogames to new segments of players.
The game, created by a Japanese company called Namco, was originally titled Puck Man when it was released in Japan in May of 1980. The character does look more like a hockey puck than…whatever a pac is…but the name was changed to Pac Man for the U.S. introduction that fall. It became such a phenomenon that Pac-Man is now the most recognizable videogame character and is known by 94 percent of American consumers, according to the Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition. (Pac-Man just barely beats out Mario of Super Mario Bros., which has 93 percent recognition.)
