Game Review: Pac-Man (1980)

The sights and sounds of Pac-Man are familiar to virtually all of us. Confined to a dark maze littered with glowing pellets, a small yellow character that is hardly more than a mouth moves about in earnest, a constant “waka-waka” noise playing in the background. His goal is simple: he must collect all of the pellets without running into any of the four colorful ghosts that haunt the maze, threatening to steal away one of his three precious lives. If players manage to clear the first maze, the screen resets and Pac-Man has to do it all again… and again, and again. Each iteration of the maze, while visually identical, is trickier than the last, with the ghosts seeming to get smarter and faster as the player progresses. There are 255 levels in total [1], but good luck making it that far! (Personally, I couldn’t get past level 7, but that may just be because I’m bad at Pac-Man.)

As a game, Pac-Man is simple, adorable, and surprisingly difficult. It’s also one of the most popular video games of all time, raking in upwards of 12 billion dollars since it first hit arcades in May 1980 [2], although that may come as little surprise if you’re aware of the origin story behind the game. In 1979, Namco employee Toru Iwatani was looking to create a game that appealed to as many potential players as possible (i.e., not just the typical “gamer demographic” of the time, which was largely made up of teenage boys). Rumor has it that he came up with Pac-Man while he was eating a pizza -- the pie, with two slices removed, looked just like the lovable yellow character we know today. Regardless of whether or not this story is true, it’s undeniable that Pac-Man has become a relic of pop culture, and it continues to be played around the world even to this day.

The significance of the game goes far beyond the cutesy facade that won its fame, however. If you break Pac-Man down into its basic elements, the story that they tell is actually somewhat sinister. Take the lack of identity associated with the Pac-Man character as an example. In this original version of the game, where Ms. Pac-Man and Pac-Man Jr. did not yet exist, players know absolutely nothing about Pac-Man’s backstory. The few cutscenes that appear near the beginning of the game, which players would expect to help in building some sort of narrative, contribute nothing other than a few amusing clips of Pac-Man and the red ghost (Blinky) chasing each other back and forth [3]. Even the physical form of Pac-Man is as stripped-down and basic as a video game character can be: he’s just a simple yellow circle, and the only thing that separates him from the pellets he consumes is the fact that he has a mouth. This lack of personal history, intentional removal of all features other than the mouth, and position as the sole playable character in the game make Pac-Man an enigma to the very players that control him, forcing them all into the same yellow, circular mold and setting the tone for a game that may be darker than most people realize.

Beyond Pac-Man himself, the maze that he is traversing also merits a closer examination. It’s dark, narrow, and difficult to navigate, which can be incredibly frustrating to players. This, combined with the fact that the map never changes -- even as Pac-Man advances through the levels, he is stuck completing the same maze over and over again -- creates a sense that Pac-Man isn’t actually exploring the maze, but is instead trapped inside of it. The two tunnels to either side of the map may look like they offer an escape, but traveling through one only causes you to come right back out on the other side. There is no way to escape the maze, no matter how hard you try.

Throw in the ghosts, which chase Pac-Man around the maze, forcing him to repeatedly alter his path to avoid being cornered, and it’s easy to see that the game is set in a fairly rigid and hostile environment. Because there is no violence, the player feels powerless; not only are they trapped in a maze and surrounded by enemies, but they have no real means of defending themselves against those enemies. (Sure, Pac-Man may be able to temporarily eat ghosts after consuming a special type of pellet, but they always come back to life mere seconds later.) In the end, the only way to truly beat the game is to figure out its patterns. The ghosts move in slightly different ways in each level, which an especially astute player will pick up on and use to his or her advantage, getting Pac-Man’s motions down to a science until he can traverse each maze without ever running into a ghost. The process of recognizing and exploiting these patterns is a lengthy one, and the game is not forgiving of players who don’t figure it out quickly, further exposing its rigidity. It’s no small wonder that it took 19 years [1] from the game’s release until someone was able to make it to the final level.

Taken as a whole, these rigid game elements suggest one underlying theme: conformity. Everyone who plays Pac-Man plays as the same character, and that character has virtually no identifying features, removing any sense of individual identity a player may have hoped for going into the game. That generic character is then trapped in an equally generic maze that never changes, focusing on the same task over and over again, level after level. It’s the rat race, but in a gamified form. If you were to put your typical 9-to-5 worker next to Pac-Man, would you be able to tell the difference? Both follow the same routine every day; both have relatively little identity in relation to whatever they are a part of, whether that be a company or a video game; and both are, in a sense, “trapped” in a world that doesn’t allow much in the way of further exploration. There’s not as big of a difference as you might think.

In the end, it doesn’t matter if you spend one hour or one year playing Pac-Man: right from the get-go, the game makes one message very clear. If you conform automatically to what you think Pac-Man wants -- that is, getting through the maze as quickly as possible, or simply trying to collect all of the pellets without any real strategy behind your motions -- you may progress in the game, but you will not win. This “blind” conformity is presented unequivocally as detrimental. However, if you conform in a very certain way by finding those specific paths for each level that can get you through without encountering any ghosts, you will prosper -- and you will have still retained your originality of thought, as you had to use your own creativity in order to discover the proper path to take. This, Pac-Man suggests, is the ultimate way to live in a world where conformity is often expected of us. Conform when you need to in order to get through certain challenges in life, but do not do so blindly; retain your sense of individuality, and above all else, your freedom of thought. And who knows? Maybe, if you take Pac-Man’s advice, you’ll be able to finally get past Level 7. (And hopefully I will as well.)

Footnotes

[1] Rosenberg, Jennifer. “Pac-Man.” ThoughtCo.com. 3 July 2019. Accessed 18 October 2019. https://www.thoughtco.com/pac-man-game-1779412.

[2] Weinberger, Matt. “The 11 top-grossing video games of all time.” Business Insider. 15 August 2015. Accessed 18 October 2019. https://www.businessinsider.com/the-11-top-grossing-video-games-of-all-time-2015-8.

[3] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGQ5sOWuzy8 for the three cutscenes that appear in the original game.