On 1980 May 22, the Japanese video game manufacturer Namco
released a new game that was invented by their employee 岩谷徹
(Toru Iwatani). The game was called 「パックマン」 and was written as
“Puckman” in the English alphabet in Japan. On that day thirty
years ago, the game was released at only one video game arcade
(ゲームセンター) in 渋谷 (Shibuya, Tokyo). The game was given the name
「パックマン」 because 「パック」 (“pakku“) or 「パックパック」 (“pakku-pakku“) is
the word Japanese use to describe chewing (click here to read a
post I wrote that describes this word and other like it in the
Japanese language) and the point of the game is to maneuver the
yellow Pac-man character around a maze and eat every dot in the
maze without running into any of the four ghosts that run around
the maze at the same time. There are four strategically-placed
“power” dots that temporarily turn the tables and allow Pac-Man
to eat the ghosts. It was probably decided to use the letters
“Puckman” to write the game’s name in Japan because “pakku-
pakku” sounds similar t