It may be difficult to imagine for someone who wasn’t there at the time – or heck, even someone who was – but following its North American arcade release by Midway Games on October 26th, 1980, Pac- Man became huge. Like, stupidly huge.
One could draw comparisons to more recent titles as a sort of gauge of how big Pac-Man was in the early 80’s: Pokémon, Guitar Hero, Minecraft, or even Mario all seem valid as contend- ers, and in some cases, have perhaps been even bigger than the maze-run- ning ghost-gobbler was in his prime, or simply had greater longevity. But one thing that must be taken into account is that while Mario helped revitalize the game industry and the others that would follow were born into that, Pac-Man became an enormous draw when the business was still in its very infancy.
In addition to spurring on multiple sequels (whose legality was iffy at best), Midway was also happy to license out Pac-Man for all sorts of tie-ins to the arcade phenomenon. Here, we’ll be talking a bit about some of the more popular items and tidbits of greater renown – some of which
you can still enjoy today!
But not this one. For the love of everything, if you should find yourself in the posses- sion of a can of Pac-Man pasta, please do not eat it. Not that the stuff was necessarily bad, but it was released in 1984, and even a sealed can (with no preservatives) is only going to do so much to keep you from winding up on a list of Darwin Award winners instead of some imaginary YouTube Valhalla.
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Brad has been a die hard arcade fan ever since he can remember. From the first time he played Space Invaders, to the first time he played Pacman, Brad has always had a love for video games. Hanging out at either the Great American Fun Factory in the mall, or spending the night in front of the glowing games at the local roller rink, he was always thinking about when he can spend the next quarter. He also worked at Babbages, which is now GameStop, for over six years. Mostly because they had a really sweet checkout policy on new products and great discounts. But since he had the Atari 2600, he has never looked back and owned some of the greatest home machines, NES, SNES, GENESIS, Turbo Graphix 16, GameBoy, Game Gear, Lynx, Playsation 1,2,3,4 and Vita, XBOX, Gamecube, and N64...just to name a few. Brad is also a reviewer for Mobile Beat Magazine as well as a freelance videographer, part time disc jockey, performing artist and photographer. But has a true love is for video games and Star Wars, as he is a member of the 501st Central Garrison. His ultimate dream is to own a fully working pinball machine and arcade machine. Difficult to say which one, but a Star Wars one would be nice start.
