ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- Masaya Nakamura, the father of the popular Pacman video arcade game, is thrilled about the global success of his creation, but he isn't crazy about the way some people spend hours playing it.
'I am a little concerned about the way some young people play it so much,' Nakamura said. 'It's not a very happy thing to see people spending so much time on it. Once it goes beyond a certain level, it is not good for young people.'
Not that Nakamura doesn't enjoy Pacman. On a recent visit to Atlantic City, the bespectacled, paunchy 57-year-old Tokyo businessman stood in front of one of his creations, grimacing and muttering in Japanese as the ominous words 'Game Over' flashed on the screen.
'He doesn't like his score,' explained Hideuki Nakajina, Nakamura's translator and the president of the American subsidiary of Nakamura's Namco Ltd. amusement game company. 'What did he get? 3,930. He says he can do much better than that.'
Nakamura is already a big winner at Pacman, but the success was something of a surprise.
'I never thought it would be this big,' he said. 'You know baseball? Well, I knew it would not be a single. But I thought maybe a double, not a home run.'
In fact, Pacman has been a grand slam. More than 250,000 units have been sold since the game was first introduced in 1979 -- 100,000 in the U.S. alone -- and a profitable cottage industry of home games, records, books, even beach towels has also sprung up, making Nakamura and Namco Ltd. very happy and very rich.
Nakamura loves to talk about the reasons for the game's widespread appeal.
First, he said, Pacman is not violent because the 'monsters come back to life after they are eaten.' Second, each monster 'has its own personality.' Third, players can gain an advantage by eating 'energy dots' that leave them temporarily immune from destruction.
Finally, Nakamura said, the game parallels life by rewarding players who have good 'timing,' knowing precisely when to be aggressive and when to walk away.
The game was the brainchild of an engineer at Namco Ltd., which before Pacman was a 28-year-old moderately successful amusement firm. The engineer, recalling schoolyard harassment by bullies, wanted to invent a game where 'he could beat bullies,' said Nakajina, the president of Namco-America in Sunnyville, Calif.
'He wanted to put in the game the idea that a good man, even if he is a weak man, can beat a bully,' Nakajina said. 'He was actually thinking of revenge.'
After developing a prototype, Nakamura took the game out for some personal test runs -- running up scores as high as 50,000 points.
'Whenever a new game is developed, he brings in the prototypes and plays up to 23 hours some days,' said Nakajina of his boss. 'He's oriented to the player's feelings, unlike some in the industry who care only for the profitability. So he personally tests games to make sure they are something a player will like.'
Deciding the game would fly, Nakamura's biggest problem was naming it.
'The idea is to eat the monster, so he wanted to use the Japanese equivalent of 'munch, munch,' which is 'paku, paku,'' Nakajina said. 'But it didn't sound English, the international language, so he wanted to use 'puck, puck' instead.'
'Well, we have trouble with kids changing the names on the games with markers,' said Nakajina with an embarrassed smile. 'But in Japan, it's still 'puck-man,' and in Italy and Southeast Asia.'
Whatever it's called, the game is still selling, and Namco is continuing to cash in on the craze. A 'Ms. Pacman' game is already on the market, and 'Baby Pacman,' 'Junior Pacman' and 'Super Pacman' are in the works, Nakajima said.
New games are also being produced, but Nakamura realizes the Pacman phenomenon may never be matched.
'Pacman was like a sun -- everything else faded in its reflection,' he said. 'I don't think we will ever have any game close to Pacman.'
