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Do you remember PAC-MAN?
Also known as Pakkuman in the Japanese translations, the arcade game emerged during the 1980’s in North America and has become synonymously with video games and the 80’s decade of pop culture spawning a social phenomenon that has transcended the mediums of fashion, art & design, food, music history and animation.
Recently, Jason Sanders, a fellow that I’ve chance-met at several social and media conferences and art events, announced on twitter that he had been requested by Google to share his derivative of PACMAN: renamed to PAC CARROT MAN via the medium of an ‘old-school’ stop-frame animation sequences on Youtube!
At the time of this post, the mini-film has reached 24,783 views!
photography by mbaltstiel
According to Wikipedia, the game was developed by “a young Namco employee Tōru Iwatani, over a year, beginning in April 1979, employing a nine-man team. The original title was pronounced pakku-man (パックマン?) and was inspired by the Japanese onomatopoeic phrase paku-paku taberu (パクパク食べる?), where paku-paku describes (the sound of) the mouth movement when widely opened and then closed in succession.
Although it is often cited that the character’s shape was inspired by a pizza missing a slice, he admitted in a 1986 interview that it was a half-truth and the character design also came from simplifying and rounding out the Japanese character for mouth, kuchi (口) as well as the basic concept of eating.”
The player “controls Pac-Man through a maze, eating pac-dots. When all dots are eaten, Pac-Man is taken to the next stage. Four ghosts (Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde) roam the maze, trying to catch Pac-Man. If a ghost touches Pac-Man, a life is lost. When all lives have been lost, the game ends.
photography by El Gran Héroe Americano
Near the corners of the maze are four larger, flashing dots known as power pellets that provide Pac-Man with the temporary ability to eat the ghosts. The ghosts turn deep blue, reverse direction, and usually move more slowly. When a ghost is eaten, its eyes remain and return to the ghost home where it is regenerated in its normal color.
Blue ghosts flash white before they become dangerous again and the amount of time the ghosts remain vulnerable varies from one board to the next, but the time period generally becomes shorter as the game progresses. In later stages, the ghosts do not change colors at all, but still reverse direction when a power pellet is eaten.”
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