| Ms. Pac-Man | |
|---|---|
| Pac-Man character | |
&sq=&lang=&file=File:Ms._Pac-Man.png) Ms. Pac-Man as she appears during gameplay in original game released in 1982. | |
| First game | Ms. Pac-Man (1982) |
| In-universe information | |
| Significant other | Pac-Man |
| Children | Jr. Pac-Man Baby Pac-Man |
Ms. Pac-Man is a character in the 1982 video game of the same name, though she was originally a character called Anna in a planned video game Crazy Otto, which became Ms. Pac-Man after Pac-Man distributor Midway Games acquired the rights to it. This character, also remade into Ms. Pac-Man, was suggested to be the star by a Midway representative. She was originally called Miss Pac-Man, though this was changed to avoid implying that she had her son out of wedlock.
While she has appeared in a number of games over the years, she stopped appearing in Pac-Man games following a re-release in the 2014 Pac-Man Museum due to what is believed to be a legal dispute between the owner of the royalty rights, AtGames, and Pac-Man creator Bandai Namco. In a remake of Pac-Man World, she was replaced with a character called Pac-Mom, which has been criticized by some critics, who believed it was an erasure of gaming history. She has been viewed as one of the first and most iconic female characters in gaming history, though she has been criticized for her design, with it being suggested that the tendency to depict female characters as derivative of a male character was reductive.