![]() ![]() I thought up a variety of verbs, such as “grab” and “surround”. When it came time to figure out what sort of game I could do, I suggested basing it around a particular verb. My aim was to come up with a game that had an endearing charm, was easy to play, involved lots of light-hearted fun, and that women and couples could enjoy. The only videogames on offer were brutal affairs involving the killing of aliens. In the late Seventies, videogame arcades, which in Japan we call ‘game centres’, were just playgrounds for boys and young men. Rather than focus on shooting things, Iwatani explored themes that might appeal to families and females, who up to this point, hadn’t embraced video games in the same way that men of the world had: He was inspired by the “happy” nature of the games he saw coming from Atari, and sought to imitate this model. Iwatani-san was seeing the market domination of these “me-too” early shoot-em-ups of the time, and took inspiration from Atari across the pond, who were receiving massive adulation (and income) for its games, which were bright, colourful, and followed many different themes and concepts. Galaxian was a huge hit, taking the basic concept of Space Invaders, but adding kamikaze enemies into the mix, that dive-bombed the player. Buoyed by it’s success, Namco followed this up by 1979’s Galaxian, the first ever video game to use colour RGB graphics, something of a revolution at the time. And so it came to pass that Namco had some early success with it’s first arcade video game, Gee Bee, developed by Iwatani. Repairing hardware wasn’t where Toru wanted to be at the time – he was a big fan of pinball, and suggested to his bosses that he worked on a video version of pinball. His first role within the business was to repair failed game boards from licensed black and white Atari video games that were distributed throughout Japan. Pac-Man’s creator, Toru Iwatani joined Namco in 1977 aged 22, when it was still known as Nakamura Manufacturing. They just placed more machines on the floor to get more coins into the cash boxes quicker – this was good news for them and good news for Namco. This was seen as a sensible strategy in the face of losing potential income from customers having to queue to get a game. Indeed, merchandise and endorsements earned Namco more in revenues than actual hardware sales of the game.Īcross the globe, instead of ordering a single unit of the new games as was usual, operators placed orders for multiple cabinets, such was the demand. Everybody has at least heard of the game, because it was one of the first to enter the realms of popular culture. This was a huge game for Namco back in the early eighties that would grow into a true 20th century icon. ![]() Continued abuse of our services will cause your IP address to be blocked indefinitely.Much has been written about Pac-Man. Please fill out the CAPTCHA below and then click the button to indicate that you agree to these terms. If you wish to be unblocked, you must agree that you will take immediate steps to rectify this issue. If you do not understand what is causing this behavior, please contact us here. If you promise to stop (by clicking the Agree button below), we'll unblock your connection for now, but we will immediately re-block it if we detect additional bad behavior.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |