Pac-Man (Atari 2600 video game)

Pac-Man
Artwork of an orange, vertical rectangular box. The top third reads "Pac-Man Video Computer System Game Program". Below that reads "8 Video Games" and "The home version of one of your favorite Arcade games. One Player • Two Players". The lower two-thirds depict a yellow circular character with his mouth open, eating a white wafer against the backdrop of a blue maze with orange walls. In the lower-left corner of the maze are three pink ghosts, each with two white eyes.
Atari 2600 cover art for Pac-Man
Developer(s)Atari, Inc.
Publisher(s)Atari, Inc.
Designer(s)Tod Frye
SeriesPac-Man
Platform(s)Atari 2600
ReleaseMarch 16, 1982[1][2][3]
Genre(s)Maze
Mode(s)Single-player, two-player

Pac-Man is a 1982 maze video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. under official license by Namco, and an adaptation of the 1980 arcade game Pac-Man. The player controls the title character, who attempts to consume all of the wafers in a maze while avoiding four ghosts that pursue him. Eating flashing wafers at the corners of the screen causes the ghosts to temporarily turn blue and flee, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for bonus points. Once eaten, a ghost is reduced to a pair of eyes, which return to the center of the maze to be restored.

Programmed by Tod Frye, Pac-Man took six months to complete. Expecting high sales, Atari produced over a million copies of the highly anticipated game and held a "National Pac-Man Day" on April 3, 1982 to promote its release.[4]

It remains the best-selling Atari 2600 game of all time, selling over 8 million copies, and was the all time best-selling video game for several years. Despite its commercial success, Pac-Man was panned by critics for poor graphics and sound, and for bearing little resemblance to the original game. It has been considered one of the worst video games ever made and one of the worst arcade game ports released on the system.

  1. ^ Staff (1982-04-05). "Pac-Man Fever". Time. Time Inc. Retrieved 2020-10-18.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference CCVAG was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ "Pac-Man gobbled up by video buffs". The Capital Times. Madison, Wisconsin. March 18, 1982. Each of the three local Copps stores received 96 of the cartridges this week. They went on sale Tuesday morning, heralded by ads in the local newspapers.
  4. ^ "Only Four More Days Until Atari National Pac-Man Day". March 30, 1982. Retrieved 2009-07-23.