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Classic Games (Games)

Pac-Man Makes Guinness Book 133

Posted by Zonk from the wakka-wakka-woot dept.
phresno writes "As a gaming icon, everybody loves Namco's Pac-Man. The arcade machine sold over 293,000 units in just eight years of its initial release and is fondly remembered even 25 years later. The success of Pac-Man has awarded it not only pop culture status, but a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. Long live Pac-Man!"
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Pac-Man Makes Guinness Book More

Pac-Man Makes Guinness Book

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  • fp? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Mikito ( 833242 ) on Saturday May 21, 2005 @04:30AM (#12597699)
    I always preferred Ms. PacMan myself. Better graphics and music.

    • Re:fp? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Saven Marek ( 739395 ) on Saturday May 21, 2005 @04:35AM (#12597713)
      Ahhh how I long for the days when games weren't all just a different version of the same first person shooter.

      • Re:fp? (Score:5, Funny)

        by h4rm0ny ( 722443 ) on Saturday May 21, 2005 @05:55AM (#12597882) Journal

        "People think that video games influence children. Ha! If that were true then my generation would be spending all its time in darkened rooms, swallowing pills and listening to repetitive music!"

      • Which begs the question: when is that first-person Pac-Man coming out?

        Picture yourself inside the maze, the yellow upper lip moving up and down on the bottom of the screen, you turn a corner and Yikes! A raspberry colored ghost is coming at you! You turn around and Yikes! Blueberry ghost was behind you all the time! Quick! Hard left!

        All the while, of course, there is a tiny bird's eye view of the maze on the left of the screen, but you lost sight of it in your greedy appetite for for the banana.

        Som

    • Re:fp? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by FidelCatsro ( 861135 )
      Ms PacMan was a better game , in the same way that Super mario Bros 3 was better than Super Mario brothers.
      The reason the cred goes to PacMan is that without it Ms PacMan would have probably been what PacMan was.
      Definantly though , Ms PacMan was one sequal that really did improve upon the origional , They learnt the leassons from PacMan and build upon its strength to build a far better game . unlike many sequals we see nowadays which add little more than a slick of paint and some mior tweaks and end up fo

    • Re:fp? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Mikito ( 833242 ) on Saturday May 21, 2005 @04:39AM (#12597723)
      In my rush to get a topical first post (I think I actually did it), I left out comments which I would have included otherwise.

      Ms. Pac Man, unlike its predecessor, had a series of animated interludes when you completed a number of levels. I think it was complete 4 levels, see a short cartoon, complete another 8 levels, see another cartoon and so on. It's been years since I've played the game.

      Ms. Pac Man also had a variety of mazes, which made the game a little more interesting...it also helped avoid (or delay) the screen burn-in that a lot of arcade games were prone to back then.

      Even so, I salute Pac Man for being included in the Guinness Book of World Records, and for its appetite of my quarters.
      • The original Pac-Man had level interludes too. The first was after the second round, when Pac-man came out from the left chased by a ghost, then came back giant-sized chasing the ghost. Then the next one where the red monster got stuck on a pin an its "hood" got ripped a bit. And so on....

      • Yep :) (Score:3, Interesting)

        by BitterAndDrunk ( 799378 )
        The interludes happened when the board layout changed, every 4 levels.

        First was Pac Man and Ms Pac Man meeting (they run across different parts of the screen chased by ghosts, then coming from opposite sides of the screen, they dodge the ghosts by moving up. Ghosts bump into each other, a little heart appears) I forget what the act was titled.

        The second was titled "The Chase" and it was right after the pretzel level IIRC.

        The third act (which was hard as hell to get to at my young age) was Junior - whe

    • Re:fp? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by caryw ( 131578 )
      Ms Pacman? classic. anyone remember the funny shaped cartridge it came in for NES?

      Link to java emulator based on MAME with Ms. Pacman [online.no]
      --
      Fairfax County, VA message board and chat [fairfaxunderground.com]
    • Yep, I had the Pac-Man fever as a kid as well. I enjoyed Super Pac-Man as well. Does anyone remember Baby Pac-Man (pinball + maze arcade)? :)
      • Wasn't Baby Pac-Man a strange hybrid where the bottom part of the game was a conventional pinball machine, but if you got the ball into a certain spot, you could play a video game which was at the top (headboard?) next to the score counter?

        I think that if you got caught in the video part, the ball would be ejected back into the pinball portion of the game.

        I haven't thought about that game for years.

        I also remember a more 3-D version of Pac-Man, which might have been the Super Pac-Man that you menti
      • Yep, I had the Pac-Man fever as a kid as well.

        You know, I didn't have the fever, but my parents and friends thought that I should. So, for my birthday (in 1982), one present was a Pacman Atari 2600 cartridge, another was Buckner & Garcia's music CD [bucknergarcia.com] of video game songs, another was a Pacman t-shirt, etc.

        jeez, to this day I will never forget that song, "Do the Donkey Kong". So lame, but so unforgetful.

        • Re:fp? (Score:2)

          by gozar ( 39392 )
          So, for my birthday (in 1982), one present was a Pacman Atari 2600 cartridge, another was Buckner & Garcia's music CD of video game songs, another was a Pacman t-shirt, etc.

          Since CDs weren't released until 1983, don't you mean the Pac-Man Fever LP? :-) That was the first album I ever purchased. I still have it and play it every once in a while. I bought the CD re-release, but it doesn't have the same "spirit" as the original LP.

      • Does anyone remember Baby Pac-Man (pinball + maze arcade)? :)

        Funny you should mention, as just last week I stripped all the interesting parts out of a Baby Pac-Man machine someone dumped in the alley behind my workplace. I don't remember ever seeing one in action, but judging by the miniscule pinball field, it looked like a pretty weak concept.

    • There are a few of us odd ones who primarily experienced Pac Man not as Pac Man at all, but as the TI 99/4A clone Munchman [videogamehouse.net].

      Munchman switches things around by having Munchman leave a trail instead of eating dots.
    • We all know you just liked Ms. PacMan because she kicks high...
    • I always preferred Ms. PacMan myself.

      Another cheap attempt to bring Breasts into a /. discussion.

  • Sweet (Score:5, Funny)

    by gordgekko ( 574109 ) on Saturday May 21, 2005 @04:31AM (#12597701) Homepage
    293 000 units? I think I dumped that many quarters into the game during the early 80s.

    • That's probably only counting the offical units. There were huge numbers of knock-off copies of the game. Quite a number of the initial court cases establishing that copyright applies to software in ROMs involved Pac-Man (and Apple ][ knock-offs).
    • Hmm... Pac-Man or a down payment on a house... choices...
  • Took long enough...now for the Monkey Island games...

  • Good for pacman (Score:4, Insightful)

    by FidelCatsro ( 861135 ) <fidelcatsro&gmail,com> on Saturday May 21, 2005 @04:33AM (#12597708) Journal
    I loved Pac-man , it was one of the first games i ever played and got hooked on it .
    Everything about it was just brilliant at the time , it was stylisticly wonderfull and pac-man has rightly so earnt its place amongst our cultural iconography.
    Though i wonder why it took the guinness book people so long to recognise Pac-man.
    *hums level up noise*

  • Namco at E3 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 21, 2005 @04:36AM (#12597718)
    Anyone else catch the Namco Pac-man birthday floor show at E3? Six stripper-esque (esque, since they don't actually strip,) dancers singing "happy birthday to you" to a guy in a pacman suit, as the crowd (somewhat) sings along.

    Surreal didn't even begin to describe...
  • hopefully namco will come to their senses [neave.com] soon
    • Namco is making records, while refusing to recognize fan-made games as an aid to their business and not theft.

      Neave ought to re-release Pac-Man, along with Dig Dug and all five (or so) Tekkens, and yank those money-hungry bastards^W^W^W record-makers out of business.

  • This isn't a real story (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 21, 2005 @04:47AM (#12597742)
    The mods were just looking for a reason to use the Pac-Man icon again.
  • Gotta love the Waiwai section of that site.

  • The record (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 21, 2005 @04:57AM (#12597763)
    What's the actual record?
    • i'm guessing the # of arcade units sold in 8 years: 293,000

    • Re:The record (Score:3, Informative)

      by elmarkitse ( 816597 )
      The article is vauge...it's either the subjective "pac man is recoginzed as the number one arcade game" or the "most units shipped." Here the only relevant part of the article...but again, it doesn't say by what means the award is being given.

      Namco's popular "Pac Man" has been recognized as the world's No. 1 arcade game, paving the way for it to be included in the Guinness Book of Records, it has been learned.

      A total of 293,000 Pac Man arcade machines were sold across the world in the eight years af
      • Guess you'll have to buy the book, or maybe wait for it to show up on the Guinness website [guinnessworldrecords.com]...
        • How can someone write an article that says something has won an award. . . and then leave out which award has been received?

          here [washingtontimes.com] is a UPI version with almost identical text, but which makes it clear (well, precise - clear isn't possible in this case) what they've won: "the No. 1 arcade game of all time."

          That is, of course, assuming it's the first story that mangled the press release, and not the second story that made a guess at trying to fill in the obvious missing information.

          Now all we need t

  • Guinness Book of Records sold out long ago (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bazmail ( 764941 ) on Saturday May 21, 2005 @04:58AM (#12597766)
    I stopped buying that book ever since i saw highly dubious catagories creeping in like "The shortest instruction manual for a computer" which was "awarded" to the iMac a few years ago.
    An obvious advertisemsent.

  • Been playing for nearly 25 years! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Riktov ( 632 ) on Saturday May 21, 2005 @05:00AM (#12597772) Journal
    I probably played Pac-Man before anyone else on Slashdot. It was September or October 1980, and I was a high school student living in Japan. My friends and I would go to a video arcade (or "game center" as they were called) in Jiyugaoka after school, and one day we came across this strange game with a cute yellow guy going around munching dots in a maze, completely unlike the Galaxian and other space-themed games we had been playing until then.

    It really was revolutionary, and we were all instantly hooked. I can still play the pattern that my friend taught me then.

    The video arcade where I first played Pac-Man 25 years ago is still there, incidentally.
    • The video arcade where I first played Pac-Man 25 years ago is still there, incidentally.

      thats pretty cool.. on my infrequent trips back home in the last 25 years, i often look for the old gamer spots, but alas the city has moved on .. though i did one time see a Galaxian t-shirt in the window of the 'fashion shop' that once was a chips&coke deli i spent far too many hot afternoons in, shooting along ..

      seems so weird to me now, spotting the cultural cue's and echo's of those games, resonating out int

    • Re: Been playing for nearly 25 years! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Alwin Henseler ( 640539 ) on Saturday May 21, 2005 @05:49AM (#12597867)
      It really was revolutionary, and we were all instantly hooked.

      Came across some webpages recently on Pac-Man history. Apparantly it was inspired by a left-over pizza (with a slice cut out), and after introduction so popular in Japan, that there was a shortage in particular coins, because so many were thrown in the Pac-Man arcade machines(!!).

      Personally, I think Pac-Man is so wonderful because it combines a deceivingly simple concept with addictive gameplay. Think about programming YAPMC (Yet Another Pac-Man Clone): at first sight, you think: simple. But you have to deal with timing, player controls, graphics/sprites etc., sounds, the game 'map' (pills, walls, powerups etc.), and even 'Artificial Intelligence' (ghost movement, yeah I know they're really dumb, but still). All the basic ingredients of modern games, except 3D or networked multiplayer. And that in a really small package, where any kid can grasp the object of the game in under 5 seconds.
      • Think about programming YAPMC (Yet Another Pac-Man Clone): at first sight, you think: simple. But you have to deal with timing, player controls, graphics/sprites etc., sounds, the game 'map' (pills, walls, powerups etc.), and even 'Artificial Intelligence' (ghost movement, yeah I know they're really dumb, but still).

        Have you never programmed a game before? All of that stuff is simple. I could knock off YAPMC in about 2 days. The part that's not trivial is doing it 25 years ago, in assembly language, with

      • I've a friend at the Guildhall [smu.edu] gamemaking school. The people in his class each put together YAPMC as a final test. I think they had a day to do it.

        His turned into an amusing political satire.

    • There is a reason why these old games still have such a loyal following. With all of the bells and whistles the new games have, the gagillion polygon z-axis texture mapping ju-ju, they lack something that the old games had in spades....a soul. Sure, the new games are pretty. So was my ex-wife at one time. Both are severely lacking in the soul department.

  • Worst Port (Score:5, Funny)

    by Adrilla ( 830520 ) * on Saturday May 21, 2005 @05:03AM (#12597776) Homepage
    Did they also award the Atari 2600 version as "Worst arcade to home console conversion ever!"?

  • A Paradigm (Score:3, Funny)

    by thomble ( 642879 ) on Saturday May 21, 2005 @05:12AM (#12597789) Homepage
    Pac-Man almost laid the foundations for the video games we now know and love.

    If only Ms. Pac-Man hadn't seduced him, domesticated him, and consequently told him to empty the trash, run to the supermarket to pick up cherries, strawberries and peaches, and gotten hooked on Power Pills [wikipedia.org], perhaps the kids these days wouldn't be so cluelessly hooked on Halo.

  • Play a Java version of the classic (Score:5, Informative)

    by oranda ( 791947 ) on Saturday May 21, 2005 @05:21AM (#12597810)
    Play a Java version of the classic:

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/pacdasher [sourceforge.net]

  • Alternative history. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 21, 2005 @05:23AM (#12597813)
    Obvious but manditory (and not entirely safe for work) link to the VG Cats History Of Pac-Man [vgcats.com]...

    Well, I giggled.
  • hmm.. lets see:

    1. ".. turns beer into something to reed?" ermm. not good.
    2. ".. of Wankey Records?" yay! what issue?
    3. ".. I'm too stoned and I can't type "of World Records" into this field any more ..
    4. ".. the field is too short.. THE FIELD IS TOO SHORT? wtF?!!!"

    hrm, okay, never mind. sorry about the shouting.

  • Here Comes Pac-Man (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Yorrike ( 322502 )
    Aw shit, here comes Pac-Man.
    Hey Pac-Man, what's up?
    Me you bitches! I'm high on crack! Wanna freebase?
    No Pac-Man drugs are bad!
    Nope can't help you man.
    Pussies! Whoa! Holy shit!

  • He got in the Guiness BOR? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 21, 2005 @06:07AM (#12597902)
    I thought it was for the number of pills munched.

  • CDs of video game sounds/music? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Saturday May 21, 2005 @06:17AM (#12597920) Homepage
    Does anyone know of CD or recording that collects all the most familiar music and sounds of the greatest video games? It would seem as if it's about time to do this, since a lot of the old consoles are still functioning in collections, so it's probably POSSIBLE to get a recording of a functioning Pac-Man or Space Invaders game even today...

    (Come to think of it, I'd gladly buy a recording of the sounds made by an IBM 407 accounting machine...)
    • you can also sometimes find midi clips to be used as ring tones. i found a few a while back and can not remember where (a random site of ring tones had them jumbled in). the only one i could find again is the start up audio from Dig Dug. that's my text message alert.

      you can probably also track down the audio because people download and play the mame files, and if i remember right you can get the audio from them. it's not a compilation CD, but it would be the actual audio files.
    • Not exactly what you're looking for, but you might check out the minibosses. (http://minibosses.com/ [minibosses.com]) They're a band that plays old video game soundtracks..quite amusing, actually.

    • Kohina.com [kohina.com]

      It has a lot of really good stuff. Okay it hurts your head at times, but anyway gives a good retro fealing :)

  • I'm slightly concerned about the person who sent in this article. Look at the sort of news site they visit. Just look at the other news on there!
    'Pimp of elementary schoolgirls arrested',
    'Teacher sacked for molesting schoolgirl', and
    'Teachers targeted in Shizuoka sex harassment scam'.
    Seems a little dodgey to me...
  • Namco officials said video arcade games were considered a big hit if the number of arcade machines reached about 1,000.
    I don't think that 1,000 was a very big number for the industry at the time, even if they were selling whole machines and not just board/graphics kits. Of course, 1,000 might have been a big number before Pac-Man...
  • Originally called Puck Man in Japan and then changed for fear that young video game players in the US would alter the P into a F - look it up in Wikipedia. Also let us not forget the promotional song from Buckner and Garcia - "Pac Man Fever" that hit the airwaves briefly. You can still find that song and the other B&G video games tunes if you google them.
    • It is Puck man, see my friends site www.puckman.org for reference
    • > Also let us not forget the promotional song from Buckner and Garcia - "Pac Man Fever" that hit the airwaves briefly.

      Aphex Twin, in the guise of Power Pill, recorded Pac-Man. Although this was recorded many years after the B&G "Pac Man Fever", the Aphex Twin version sounds more Pac-Man like than the B&G version (the style of the music integrates better with the pacman sounds). AE.

    • I don't see the need to change the name, as Puck could be some sort of hockey reference, what with the main character eating pucks up and down the maze.

      A couple of years back, there was a new guy at work who, when in idle mode, just stood there staring at some point beyond a speck in the wall, with his mouth hanging open. It took co-workers all of one day to coin the guy a nickname: you guessed it, Pac-Man.
  • I mean, I for one was once running in the dark eating pills and listening to repetitive music...
  • I remember back in the 80's there was even a Pac-man cartoon. In the cartoon pac-man had a pac-dog and a wife. The head bad guy was the ghosts' boss. He looked kind of like Darth Vader.

  • Namco still sells new Pac-Man cabinets (Score:3, Informative)

    by Beebos ( 564067 ) on Saturday May 21, 2005 @10:23AM (#12598698)
    Well, almost. Actually its a Ms. Pac-Man and Galga combo cabinet. BUT, you can play Pac-Man after pressing start by moving the joystick up,up, up, down, down, down, left, right, left, right. left
  • I just tried several different searches at the Guinness world records website and can't find a single reference to Pac man.

    According to their website [guinnessworldrecords.com] , the worlds best selling video game is Super Mario Brothers with 40.23 million copies sold worldwide, the best selling handheld video game is the Game Boy with 100 million units sold.

    A quick note however, their website only sports 40,000 records, so their is a chance that it is in the full book.
    • According to their website , the worlds best selling video game is Super Mario Brothers with 40.23 million copies sold worldwide

      That's for the NES cartridge version. 40+ million arcade cabinets and you'd have one in every retail outlet on the planet, practically.

      Odd though - I would have sworn that Ms. Pac-man outsold Pac-man in the day. There sure seems to be a lot more of the Ms. cabinets still left.
    • From the linked article, Pac man is recognized as the world's No. 1 arcade game, while Mario is world's best selling.
  • I got a pocket full of quarters and I'm headed for the arcade!

    I used to have that song on a 45 rpm.

    LK
    • A while back I bought the Pac Man Fever CD from mpe.com - has a lot of oldy moldy arcade songs from B&G: Pac Man Fever, Froggy's Lament, Ode To Centipede, Do The Donkey Kong, Hyperspace, The Defender, Mousetrap and Goin' Berzerk.
  • Because is the most sold game ever. Not restrictions like "most sold console game", "most sold pc game", "fastest selling xbox game (halo 2)", but the absolutely best seller in video games.

    Super Mario Bros 3 deserves it!
  • If someone could either correct me or find the article I remember reading it in, but didn't Golden Tee become the #1 arcade game of all time (in units sold) like last year?
    • If someone could either correct me or find the article I remember reading it in, but didn't Golden Tee become the #1 arcade game of all time (in units sold) like last year?

      This article [well.com] brings up only 50,000 units sold.

  • Did anyone else think the article was about a book on a fine Irish Stout? Now there's a game. The more pellets you eat the more wonky the controls get. I mean, seriously, if there was a gum that tasted like Irish Car Bombs* I would buy it by the case.

    * Irish Car Bomb
    Fill a shot glass 1/2 Irish Whiskey, 1/2 Irish Cream, then drop into a 3/4 full glass of Guiness (the beer not the book) and drinkrealfast. Repeat at most 3 times in one evening, or 5 if not drinking anything else.

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