DID YOU KNOW

The Pac Man video game is considered one of the most influential games of all time, it helped establish the Maze game genre where the entire playing field was a maze and rapid player responses were needed to escape monsters, outrace an opponent or navigate the maze with certain time limits. It was also among the first games to use power-ups, objects that were collected that instantly gave benefit or added abilities to a character to help it in game play for short periods of time like: increased speed, invincibility, weapons or lives.

Game Beginnings
Among game designer Toru Iwatani’s design methods was the use of key words associated with a story to help him develop his ideas. Paku-paku (is for language buffs a reduplicating onomatopoeic adverbial set) meaning munch munch and the kanji word taberu meaning ‘to eat’ — so then, paku-paku taberu means “munch munch in small quick bites” became the starting point for the game. In a Chris Kohler Q & A back in 2010 and when asked “Is that story true, that you thought of the shape of Pac-Man after removing one slice from a pizza?” Iwatani said, “It’s true.”

Ghost Stories
While it’s commonly known that eating power pellets reverses the direction of the ghosts and allows Pac Man to eat them for a short period of time, what’s less commonly known is that after Level 19, the ghosts still reverse direction but can’t be eaten. Other games also leveraged power-ups in their design, the most famous of those being Mario’s red mushroom. Image Credits: VG Museum / Mario Fandom

OFF the WALL

Dark Horse Digital is a two-person, bootstrapped Start Up. It began in 2013 embodying the trans-Tasman spirit of its founders: of mateship, ingenuity and endurance. Off the Wall are some fair dinkum fascinations shared with our Facebook Followers.

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