The character's eyes originally started as regular eyes, but changed to dot eyes as the character was drawn further. The character originally had a bowtie, but this feature was removed. In early designs, Pac-Man's boots were originally colored orange, but changed to red in the final design while his gloves were originally colored yellow but were changed to orange. Yamashita designed Pac-Man with arms and legs, but as he felt the design was basic, he added eyes and other features such as boots and gloves after sketching the character more. When designing the character, Yamashita wanted the design to feel 'retro' many design elements of Pac-Man incorporated aspects of vintage American designs. Pac-Man's limbed design was created by Tadashi Yamashita, who had been working at Namco since 1969 prior to entering the video game industry as an artwork, logo and typeface artist for electro-mechanical machines made by Namco such as F-1 and Submarine. In his early designs, the character's limbed design had noticeable features such as a long 'Pinnochio-like' nose and cheeks that would be simplified in later renditions of Pac-Man. Įarly designs of the side cabinet artwork for Pac-Man from Tadashi Yamashita from the 11th and final episode of 'NAMCO MUSEUM of ART', showcasing a cabinet artwork draft featuring an early design of Pac-Man. The Pac-Man name would eventually become the character's universal name for all Pac-Man related products following worldwide. Namco president Masaya Nakamura made the decision to change the game and titular character's name to 'Pac-Man' overseas, as the name was similar to the Japanese pronunciation of the name, Pakkuman. When the American division of Namco localized the 'Puckman' game for North America, Namco America feared vandalizers would change the P in the word of 'Puck' to an F, creating a swear.

Upon the game's completion, the character and game was titled Pakkuman (パックマン), romanized as Puckman in English. In a design session, Iwatani noisily ate fruit and made gurgling noises to describe to Toshio Kai, Pac-Man's sound designer, how he wanted Pac-Man's eating effect to sound. The idea for Pac-Man powering up using Energizers was a concept Iwatani borrowed from the cartoon character Popeye the Sailor Man, a cartoon character that temporarily acquires superhuman strength after eating a can of spinach as well as being partly inspired by a Japanese children's story about a creature that protected children from monsters by devouring them. Pac-Man's name comes from the onomatopoeic Japanese word paku-paku (パクパク), a term for gobbling something up. Additionally, possibly by coincidence, a separate Pac-Man brand by Tomy existed six years prior to Iwatani's creation. However, in a 1986 interview, Toru Iwatani said that the design of the character also came from simplifying and rounding out the Japanese character for a mouth, kuchi (口). From Toru Iwatani the creator of Pac-Man, the inspiration was pizza without a slice, which gave him a vision of 'an animated pizza, racing through a maze and eating things with its absent-slice mouth'.

Throughout the years, there have been conflicting sources of Pac-Man's origins. The RGB display would be pivotal for the idea of the project which eventually became Pac-Man, so it could display vibrant colors for the titular character. The game and its concepts went into development in 1979 alongside Namco's shooter game Galaxian, which would be Namco's first video game with an RGB video display, allowing for colorful palette selections and graphics. When deciding on the game's theme, Iwatani thought of what women enjoyed, and settled on the theme of eating for the game and characters since women enjoyed eating sweets and other desserts. He decided to create a concept for a game with cuter characters that would appeal to women, as he believed that making a game that would appeal to women would make arcades appear more family friendly, since he felt that arcades at the time had seedy environments. At the time, game developer Toru Iwatani felt arcade games only appealed to men for many games sharing themes of crude graphics, shooter gameplay and violence. In Japan, video games had surged in popularity following the success of games such as Space Invaders and Breakout. Namco became accustomed to the video game industry following the releases of Gee Bee, Bomb Bee and Cutie Q despite the titles being considered commercial failures. Concept art of Pac-Man (1980), showcasing the earliest sprite sketches of Pac-Man.

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