Arcade Files · 👾 The golden age (1978–83)

G33Z3R Arcade Files · 19801985

When did Pac-Man come out in the U.S.?

Pac-Man

Released
1980 in Japan; October 1980 in the U.S.
Made by
Namco; designed by Toru Iwatani; U.S. distribution by Midway
How it played
Eat the dots, dodge four ghosts with four personalities, grab a power pellet and turn the tables
The numbers
About 100,000 U.S. cabinets, the most of any arcade game; a cartoon, a hit song, a cereal

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The file

Designed to bring women into arcades that were all shooting games, it brought in everyone. The ghosts each had a strategy, Blinky chased and Pinky ambushed, and a generation learned patterns that still work.

Pac-Man fever was a real thing with a real song on the charts in 1982. The Atari 2600 port was so bad it helped crash the industry, which the arcade original survived without noticing.

Sources: Wikipedia — Pac-Man

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