Pac-Man was designed to attract women to the "dirty and smelly" arcades of 1980. To accomplish this, Toru Iwatani chose a subject for his game that he knew women to be fond of: eating sweets. According to Iwatani, "Girls love to eat desserts!"
Iwatani called the arcades of 1980 "A playground for boys." His goal for Pac-Man was to attract "girls and couples" and generally make arcades "cleaner and brighter."
Pac-Man is all about having the munchies. The name "Pac-Man" itself comes from the Japanese term paku-paku (which describes the sound of munching), and Toru Iwatani refers to the large power pellets that turn the ghosts blue, "big cookies."
Pac-Man's classic dissolving death sequence was made to resemble the explosion of fireworks.
Toru Iwatani's boss didn't agree with the idea that the ghosts should be multicolored, because, she said, people wouldn't know which ones were good or bad. She suggested they all be red. Iwatani took a poll of the office and multicolored ghosts won 15-to-nothing and stayed in the game.
The total size of Pac-Man's game file is under 24 Kilobytes: about the size of a picture of Pac-Man on the Internet.
When asked about Super Pac-Man, the sequel to Pac-Man, Toru Iwatani didn't have fond memories. He calls it "boring" and says that Pac-Man was too big. Sorry, Supes! Have your own Pac-Facts? Or fond memories of maze-munching? We want to see them in comments below.
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