primer
Video games have been attracting more and more attention, both from those who are interested in their ability to attract money and from parents who are angry that they are affecting their children’s learning and physical and mental health. The influence of video games is not insignificant today, but it is less than a century old. Even if you count the first video game, Spacewar, developed in 1962 by Steve Russell and three others in the “PDP-1” (an early computer model). (Spacewar!), a mere 58 years later, and pong, the first commercially available game to actually enter the lives of ordinary people, a decade after Spacewar.
But what is amazing is the amazing progress video games have made in those short decades. Especially in the decade or so since “pong” appeared, there have been a number of classic games, including the “Mario” series, the “Zelda” series, “Dragon Quest”, and “The Greatest Showman”. “The “Final Fantasy” series is still the hottest game IP today, and a lot of great game design ideas were developed at that time, and are still in use today.
Nowadays, games of all kinds are blossoming, and some games that combine elements of classic game genres and “chicken” have also achieved a lot of success. Bandai Namco recently announced that Pac-Man: Mega Tunnel Battle, a fusion of Pac-Man and Chicken, will be available on the Stadia cloud gaming platform. Today we’re going to talk about Pac-Man, which was born on the arcade platform in 1980, and its author, Toru Iwatani.
The origin and impact of Pac-Man.
The 1980s gaming market was filled with all kinds of violent games, most of which revolved around war and space invasion, which resulted in a market that was far more male than female. Pac-Man was first developed with the idea of making a game for female gamers or couples. Although I have no way of knowing what his reasons were for making a game for women at the time, the market for women’s games is huge today, and the number of female players is still growing. As for the decision to make Pac-Man, it was inspired by the pizza he was eating, and the difference between the common man and the master is reflected in the fact that a piece of pizza eaten by a master can become a “game character” that takes the world by storm, while in the eyes of the common man it will always be a piece of pizza that has been eaten.
Thankfully, Pac-Man has been a huge success, and that’s why we’re here today to talk about these fun facts at length. A lot of people, including myself, have probably played Pac-Man before and enjoyed and enjoyed it, but didn’t realize just how amazing the game really is. John Roethlisberger, whose credits include German Headquarters and Doom, sounds like he has nothing to do with Pac-Man, but he’s said in interviews that a lot of the level design in those games was influenced by Pac-Man. Another game maker we’re more familiar with, Hideo Kojima, has also said that Pac-Man’s mode appears many times in his sneak peek game, Spyro Undertaker. There are many more such examples, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense to list them all, but the side note is that Pac-Man has had a profound impact on the gaming world, and it’s never just fun.
Fortunately, Pac-Man was a success, but I can safely say that its success was almost inevitable due to its far-reaching impact on the gaming industry, as its game design concepts are still being used in games today that were not or have not been perfected before it. Hard to come after. Let’s talk about the design approach of Pac-Man, Pac-Man, and Toru Iwatani.
Design Approach: Simplicity – Appealing to a wider target audience
First things first, Toru Iwatani makes it very clear that games have to be simple. His definition of simplicity is also very simple, to make people know what to do at a glance, such as playing golf, with just a little explanation people know that all they have to do is hit the ball into the hole, like the early pinball machines and “pong” are very simple. Because of this simplicity, these games tend to appeal to a wider audience, because they instantly understand how much fun the game is and whether they like it or not. In keeping with this philosophy, Pac-Man also achieves another feat, as Pac-Man’s protagonist, Toru Iwatani, was inspired to make Pac-Man while eating pizza, making him the first true historical character in a video game. Previous video games had people, aliens, flying saucers, and the like, but they were all very homogeneous, mapped onto the game as something in reality, but Pac-Man was a different story, a real video game character with a name of his own! –Pac-Man. Pac-Man was selected by the Guinness Book of World Records Gamer’s Edition 2010 as one of the “Most Famous Game Characters”. To this day, he remains one of Namco’s most iconic characters and mascots, and is one of the most recognized characters in the world.
I mentioned earlier that Toru Iwatani was thinking of creating a game for women and couples to play before making Pac-Man, so simplicity was a very necessary part of the equation. Even with a game as advanced as The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, I’ve encountered friends who still couldn’t get the point of the game despite repeated explanations, resulting in failure. I had a deep discussion about this with a friend after multiple failed attempts at amnesia, and I had always thought that Breath of the Wild’s guidance was very cleverly done, which is exactly the point at which I got hooked on the game, but my friend’s perspective gave me new insight, and he said that not all gamers have a lot of experience with the game, and that many people may spend years playing a competitive or role-playing online game, and their mindset is completely inapplicable to the With something like Breath of the Wild, those designs that I think are clever actually still have some threshold at all. But if the game was as simple and straightforward as golf, and all you needed to know was the rule of hitting the ball into the hole, then there would be no threshold, and everyone would know what they needed to do in the game. Pac-Man does just that, and the rules couldn’t be simpler: eat as many of the game’s beans as you can and avoid the colored ghosts, unless you’re eating Popeye.
Powerball – the first enhancement item in video game history!
Just as the main character Pac-Man was the first character in video game history, Popeye Maru was definitely the first enhancement item in video game history, and Pac-Man, some might say, was just a name that wasn’t used in previous works, but the concept of enhancement items was actually designed by Toru Iwatani in Pac-Man. I’ve done some research, but unfortunately I can’t find any reference to the original design of the Powerball, but I’m still amazed that Toru Iwatani was willing to take action. I don’t need to repeat the influence of this design, besides Pac-Man itself, one of the most classic enhancement items in the history of the game is probably the flower of Super Mario’s various abilities. I really don’t know if it’s called “intelligence” that games these days put so much effort into these items just to get players to pay more. It’s all good human virtues, but maybe there’s no such thing as a high or a low level.
Ghosts of Mischief – Interesting Attack Logic Design
Powerball is a nerfing item in the design of Pac-Man, nerfing items have a huge impact on video game history, and its own role in the game is very important. We know that the rules of “Pac-Man” is very simple, in addition to eating the beans is to avoid the ghost, when I was a child I only think how this game is so difficult, how can not pass the level, the ghost is like a shadow how to avoid it. It wasn’t until years later when I read the walkthrough that I realized the seemingly random ghosts actually had a very advanced design.
We’ve finally mentioned Popeye, and those of you who have played Pac-Man will know that the goal of the game is to eat the beans and avoid being chased by the ghosts. But when we eat Popeye, the rules no longer prevent us from doing so, and the player is able to use “Pac-Man” to catch up with the phantom and kill him, and the phantom doesn’t just sit there and die, he scatters. This setup is everywhere today, but at the time, 40 years ago, in the world of video games, I could only describe the appearance of Popeye as a two-word wonder.
Each color ghost has its own set of chase logic: the red ghost will always target Pac-Man and choose the shortest path to chase him, the pink ghost will chase the first four squares of Pac-Man’s path, the blue ghost will move symmetrically with the pink ghost on Pac-Man’s axis, the yellow ghost’s seemingly random movement has a pattern, targeting Pac-Man at first, but then approaching Pac-Man. Then it will move to the lower left corner of the map. During the chase, the ghosts will suddenly disperse, giving the player time to catch their breath, and when the player obtains a reinforcement item, the ghosts will scatter in fear. Chasing – Scattering – Scaring – these three make the rhythm of the game wavy, which Toru Iwatani felt made more sense than attacking all the time, a design that reflected his understanding of “game tolerance”. In chicken games, for example, you don’t have to run in circles and shoot at each other all the time, so the player has a long period of time to search the map and become “Voldemort”.
Maybe it’s not such a big deal in today’s terms, but at the time of Pac-Man, a time when alien invaders were constantly attacking in batches, Toru Iwatani was certainly creative with this concept, whether it was the clever phantom chase logic or the wavy rhythm of the attack rhythm.
BOTTOM LINE
Pac-Man is one of the most influential games in the history of gaming, and in addition to the aforementioned, there were many interesting attempts to make the game more interesting, such as the inclusion of an over-the-top animation (which Toru Iwatani called a “tea break”), possibly the first over-the-top animation in video game history. As mentioned earlier, Toru Iwatani originally developed Pac-Man to attract women and couples. The final design. Whether it’s a tea break, a wavy rhythm design, or different colored ghosts, it’s all part of Toru Iwatani’s approach to game design – to please the people who play the games. In today’s booming video game world, Toru Iwatani’s specific design and concept for Pac-Man is still an important reference.
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