Pac-Man (universe)

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Pac-Man (universe)

Developer(s)	Bandai Namco General Computer Corporation Various
Publisher(s)	Bandai Namco Midway Games Atari Various
Designer(s)	Tōru Iwatani
Genre(s)	Maze Puzzle Quiz Platformer Sports Party Point & click adventure Metroidvania Endless runner
Console/platform of origin	Arcade
First installment	Pac-Man (1980)
Latest installment	Pac-Man World 2 Re-Pac (2025)
Article on Wikipedia	Pac-Man (universe)

ThePac-Man universe (パックマン,Pacman, initially romanized asPuckman), officially stylized asPAC-MAN, refers to theSuper Smash Bros. series' collection of characters, stages, and properties fromBandai Namco's massively successful and long-running media franchise. A staple of popular culture, it is one of the most lucrative and influential video game franchises in history, with theoriginal title being the highest-grossing coin-op arcade game of all time,^[1] popularizing the concept of a video game mascot — the titularPac-Man — and spawning a wave of sequels and spin-offs, as well as animated series, songs, and merchandise, becoming a mascot for Bandai Namco. It was first represented inSuper Smash Bros. 4, and returned inSuper Smash Bros. Ultimate, both developed by Bandai Namco.

Franchise description[edit]

Masaya Nakamura's company, Nakamura Amusement-machine Manufacturing Company (orNAMCO), founded an American subsidiary in 1978 to license its video arcade machines to companies in the United States. The same year, Namco released its first internally designed video arcade game,Gee Bee. Following this, Namco developed and released the highly popular fixed shooter gameGalaxian in 1979 to compete with Taito Corporation's successful earlier game,Space Invaders.Galaxian revolutionized the arcade industry as the first game to use RGB-color graphics, and it and its 1981 sequelGalaga became fixtures in what was subsequently remembered as the "Golden Age of arcade video games" — the peak era of arcade video game popularity and technological innovation.

However, Namco's project in between, 1980'sPac-Man, would arguably become even more definitive of both the era and Namco's legacy. A young Namco employee named Toru Iwatani designed the game with the intention to appeal to a wider audience beyond young boys and teenagers — demographics that were typical of the time because of the prevalence of space shooter-themed arcade machines. He therefore fashioned a game out of maze-like elements and a colorful aesthetic with cute character designs, including a player character he originally named "Puckman" after the Japanese phrase ぱくぱく ("paku paku"), an onomatopoeia used to represent the sound of eating. In North America, the game was licensed by Midway Games (now NetherRealm Studios, a subsidiary of Warner Bros.). As it was realized the original name could be vandalized to say "Fuck-Man" by changing the "P" into an "F", Namco decided to rename the game and the characterPac-Man for the North American release, and this name was adopted in all subsequent Japanese material.

The originalPac-Man is set in a static, neon-colored maze, where the wedge-shapedPac-Man must traverse every corridor and lane at least once in order to eat every one of 244 dots distributed across the screen. Pac-Man is at constant risk from four differently-colored "ghosts" that roam the maze with the intention to collide into him, which will cost him a life. Each of the four ghosts has a unique way of targeting Pac-Man — their behavior is hinted at in the game's title sequence, which gives each one a nickname and character trait (for example, "Blinky" the red ghost is characterized as "Shadow", because he chases Pac-Man more persistently than the others). Four of the dots in the maze are large, blinkingPower Pellets. When Pac-Man eats one of these, the ghosts temporarily turn blue and vulnerable, and will be briefly taken out of the game when Pac-Man collides with them in this state.

The point score — the ultimate objective of the game, like with many arcade games — increases with each dot that is eaten. The score can be further increased by eating the ghosts (with higher rewards for eating multiple ghosts in a row) or theBonus Fruits that appear at certain thresholds twice in each round. When a maze is cleared, the board will be reset, and the next round will begin. As the rounds continue, the ghosts become faster and more aggressive, the Power Pellet's duration becomes shorter, and higher-valued fruits appear. After round 20, the game reaches its maximum difficulty, and essentially continues endlessly until the player runs out of lives, or reaches level 256, the bugged "kill screen" which cannot be cleared. When all levels are cleared perfectly, the maximum possible score is 3,333,360 points.

Despite its initially lukewarm reception in Japan, it is difficult to overstate the immense impact that the North American release of the gamePac-Man had. It quickly became far more popular than anything seen in the game industry up to that point, grossing over $1 billion in quarters within a decade, and towards the end of the 20th century, the game's total gross in quarters had been estimated at more than 10 billion quarters ($2.5 billion), making it the highest-grossing video game of all time. It established the maze chase game genre, and is also credited for laying the foundations for the stealth genre due to its emphasis on avoiding enemies rather than fighting them;Pac-Man is often cited as an inspiration for the originalMetal Gear.

It demonstrated the potential for character in video games; not only did the enemy ghosts have unique personalities in how they attacked, but Pac-Man himself was the first video game mascot (and is often argued to be the first distinctive video game character, at least outside of the text adventure genre). It was the first video game to feature power-ups, and is often credited as the first game to feature cutscenes, albeit not to the degree that Nintendo's own revolutionary arcade game,Donkey Kong, had the following year. Finally, it is one of the earliest games to become popular with a female audience, and this wide appeal allowed it to become gaming's first licensing success. Pac-Man was determined to have the highest brand awareness of any video game character among American consumers.

Pac-Man became one of few games to have been consistently published for over four decades, with many remakes and sequels released on numerous platforms. This is not to mention the influx of unauthorizedPac-Man clones that took place soon after the original release, nor of the ill-fated port of the game for the Atari 2600 (which ironically was a contributing factor to the infamous North American1983 video game crash, due to underpowered hardware and rushed development leading to poor sales and an oversaturated market).

One such unauthorized clone — a modification titledCrazy Otto, developed by General Computer Corporation — received attention from Midway, who subsequently licensed the game as an "official"Pac-Man sequel. With some changes to the character design,Crazy Otto becameMs. Pac-Man, which garnered a great deal of success of its own due to its improvements over the original title. Despite its development happening without Namco's consent, the company approved of the character and included the feminine take onPac-Man in variousPac-Man compilations and ports. In the 2010s, a lawsuit over Namco's failure to pay royalties owed to GCC, followed by GCC's share of the rights being purchased by AtGames (a micro-console manufacturer), left ownership of Ms. Pac-Man in dispute. This has resulted in a complete erasure of the character in recent years, with products featuring her being pulled from stores and a new character named "Pac-Mom" replacing her in re-releases and remakes of old titles.

As the series progressed with continued releases that explored different genres, the iconic yellow wedge shape that ordinarily defined the title character onscreen was phased out for a design closer to his appearance on the promotional artwork printed on the arcade machines themselves — an abstract, spherical humanoid with rudimentary limbs and a massive face with a stick-like nose that varied in length between appearances. This design was first seen in-game in the 1984 titlePac-Land, in part to tie in with aHanna-Barbera animated series about Pac-Man that ran for two seasons in 1982 and 1983.Pac-Land is an innovative title in itself as one of the first side-scrolling platform games, and one of the first games to includeparallax scrolling. It is considered a major foundation for later platformers, codified by 1985'sSuper Mario Bros.

The steady stream ofPac-Man games was more-or-less halted for roughly six years afterPac-Mania for the arcades in 1987, before resuming on consoles withPac-Attack in 1993. Through releases on a variety of competing platforms, including the PC, the formerly maze-based series explored genres as varied as puzzle, adventure, platformer, party, racing, and even pinball. These games often introduced a colorful cartoon world, not unlike that ofMario andSonic, and a wide variety of characters outside of the original cast of the arcade game, not the least of which were Pac-Man's wife and children. It could be argued that, as recently as the early 2010s,Pac-Man as a property was easily more relevant as a forerunner to modern video games than as a starring video game franchise, due to the tendency of these experimentalPac-Man games to cater to young child demographics and garner at-times mediocre reception, but Namco nonetheless continues to honor the character as its company mascot.

A new character design was formally introduced forPac-Man's 30th anniversary in 2010, beginning withPac-Man Party and continuing through the computer-animated seriesPac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures, which began airing in 2013. However, the rebooted franchise and its associated design was met with lukewarm reception, and in the meantime a new subseries had taken hold; thePac-Man Championship Edition games, conceptualized by original game designer Toru Iwatani and initially released in 2007. Two other entries in this series,Championship Edition DX andChampionship Edition 2, were released in 2010 and 2016 respectively, and overall marked a return to the classic maze gameplay and character designs associated with the series.

In an odd twist of fate, Pac-Man was involved both in another company's crossover fighting game —Capcom'sStreet Fighter X Tekken, wherein he was a playable character exclusively in PlayStation versions — and in theMario series — as a playable racer in theMario Kart Arcade GP series, racing arcade games developed jointly by Namco and Nintendo — before he was included for the first time as a playable fighter in Nintendo'sSuper Smash Bros. series of crossover fighting games in 2014, also a joint Nintendo-Namco effort. Inversely, Mario also made a cameo appearance in thePac-Man series, acting as the announcer in the Nintendo-developed party titlePac-Man Vs.

InSuper Smash Bros. 4[edit]

ThePac-Man franchise is introduced inSuper Smash Bros. 4. Uniquely among other third-party franchises, it brings along elements from other properties of the same company. Elements from Namco's early Arcade games -Mappy,Dig Dug,Galaga, andGalaxian - are present along with small cameos from others. Seehere for elements pertaining to those series.

Fighter[edit]

Pac-Man (Starter): Pac-Man is one of the oldest and most recognizable video game characters of all time; he is a gluttonous ghost-hunter created byNamco. He was initially announced in a privateSmash event duringE3 2014 before being revealed worldwide on theSmash 4 site the following day. Pac-Man is the fourth third-party character/series introduced toSmash Bros. Rather than being based off of his modern incarnation fromPac-Man Party andPac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures, Pac-Man appears in his classic design from earlier ventures such asPac-Land and thePac-Man World titles. His moveset consists of eating power pellets and using 8-bit items and enemies from his own game, along with those of various Namco arcade games.

Stages[edit]

for Nintendo 3DS[edit]

Pac-Maze is exclusive to the 3DS version. In addition to Pac-Maze, one of the phases onPictoChat 2 has sketched Pac-Men appear as hazards. This phase is based onPac-Pix.

Pac-Maze (Unlockable): staged within the maze of the originalPac-Man. It has several platforms and all four ghosts: Blinky, Inky, Pinky, and Clyde. Power Pellets appear upon collecting 100 Pac-Dots and make fighters temporarily invincible to the ghosts upon being collected, being turned into their vulnerable "turn-to-blue" forms. ItsΩ form is columnar.

for Wii U[edit]

Pac-Land (Unlockable): a stage based on theeponymous arcade game. Similar toMushroomy Kingdom, it is a traveling side-scrolling stage that begins before Pac-Man's house and brings the fight to various regions in Pac-Land. It is a faithful replication of all seven levels fromPac-Land: the town, forest, mountains, desert, ponds, bridge, and castle. Hazardous elements fromPac-Land were carried over into this stage, such as the water-spraying fire hydrants, falling wood, unswimmable water, and unstable bridge. Like the original, secrets can be found through the stage to power-up the fighters.Ms. Pac-Man and the Mother Fairy cameo on this stage. Pac-Land is one of the possible stages to appear in Level 7 ofAll-Star Mode as ahome stage for Pac-Man. ItsΩ form is a columnar plateau occurring in the mountains.

Assist Trophy[edit]

Ghosts: evasive poltergeists from the originalPac-Man -Blinky (the red ghost),Pinky (the pink ghost),Inky (the cyan ghost), andClyde (the orange ghost). The ghosts wander around the stage in pursuit of opponents, mimicking their movement from the original arcade game: Blinky takes the shortest route to opponents, Pinky tries to move in front of them, Inky moves opposite to Blinky, and Clyde moves randomly. They deal 10% damage, cannot be shielded, and speed up several seconds before they despawn, notified by a change in pitch of their "wandering" tone. They do not harm the summoner. Unlike other Assist Trophies, they simply zoom off-screen instead of disappearing. The ghosts are also a part of Pac-Man's moveset (appearing in his smash attacks) and appear as hazards on the Pac-Maze stage.

Music[edit]

Main article:List of SSB4 Music (Pac-Man series)

Original Tracks[edit]

Arrangements and remixes unique toSmash 4.

PAC-MAN: a medley of pieces from the originalPac-Man, including "Start Music" and "Coffee Break Music". It plays on Pac-Maze and Pac-Land. It is featured on Disc 2 ofA Smashing Soundtrack.
PAC-MAN (Club Mix): an electronic-influenced medley of pieces fromPac-Man, including "Start Music" and "Coffee Break Music". It plays on Pac-Maze and Pac-Land. It is featured on Disc 1 ofA Smashing Soundtrack.
PAC-MAN'S PARK / BLOCK TOWN: an arrangement of "Pacman's Park" and "Block Town" fromPac-Mania. "Pacman's Park" itself is partially an arrangement of "Coffee Break Music" fromPac-Man. It plays on Pac-Land and in Smash Run. It was used in Pac-Man's reveal trailer "Red, Blue and Yellow" and is featured on Disc 2 ofA Smashing Soundtrack.

Victory Theme[edit]

Victory! Pac-Man: a flourish of "Start Music" fromPac-Man.

Other[edit]

When the Ghost Assist Trophies are summoned, their movement is accompanied with "Ghost: Spurt Move #2" from the original arcade game. When their period of summons is nearing its end, the ghosts become faster and the music shifts to "Ghost: Spurt Move #4".

Trophies[edit]

Main article:List of SSB4 trophies (Pac-Man series)

Masterpiece[edit]

Main article:Masterpieces

Pac-Man

InSuper Smash Bros. Ultimate[edit]

ThePac-Man universe returns mostly unchanged. One major change is that all Bandai Namco songs, excludingTekken songs, are now labeled asPac-Man songs. These songs include new remixes fromGalaga,Mappy, andDragon Spirit.