The ‘father of Pac-Man’ dies: The man who came up with the name for iconic 1980s arcade [tr]

UK Daily Mail ^ | January 30, 2017 | Gareth Davies

[C19fan]

The Father of Pac-Man Masaya Nakamura, who pioneered the release of Pac-Man and founded the Japanese video game company behind the iconic game, has died at the age of 91. Nakamura, who died on January 22, founded Namco in 1955, which started out as just two mechanical horse rides on a department store rooftop but went on to pioneer game arcades and amusement parks. Pac-Man, designed by Namco engineer and video game maker Toru Iwatani, went on sale in 1980, and has since been played an estimated 10billion times.

[C19fan]

Ghost finally caught up with Mr. Pac-Man.

[Impala64ssa]

Went through tons of quarters before I could make it to the top levels on that crazy game. Good times. ☺

[al_c]

[C19fan]

I remember the cheat books for Pac-Man showing the most successful patterns.

[Sarah Barracuda]

LOVED Pac-Man..a classic..RIP

[JoeProBono]

[rey]

Josef Peiper said the three most difficult things to do are; 1) Keep a secret, 2) Endure an injustice, 3) Make good/quality use of leisure time.

[ecomcon]

10 Billion times? I don’t believe that.

Just my kids played it like a billion times.

[Vaquero]

[golux]

Pac-Men don’t die, they just give up the ghost.

[TigerClaws]

Need the sound effects !

[Calvin Locke]

I had a roommate that got a job with a board game company to port a console game to the Atari 2600. Out of the company's research came certain tidbits of general information.

The one I remember is the learning curse. Getting to a certain level is can be easy, then there's a long, mostly flat (and coin eating) plateau before you start advancing again.

[Puppage]

I was a Space Invaders freak.

[dhs12345]

Probably a similar design in slot machines.

[ETL]

Those very simple video games back then, IMO, were vastly more enjoyable and entertaining than the new overly complex ones today.

[Sarah Barracuda]

Oh I LOVED Space Invaders..I have the NES Mini so its great playing some of these classics..too bad I can’t play Duck Hunt on it I still have the original gun

[Snickering Hound]

They also made 'Galaga'.

Pacman was for chicks.

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

Geeez, if he made .001 for every quarter that was dropped into those machines he likely died a billionaire.

[Hot Tabasco]

I have a friend who was an avid walleye fisherman with a Lorenz (sp?) fish locator. On one fishing trip, he got caught in a rain storm and the locator got soaked. When he was trying to reset it, he accessed a video game that was on it..........

[ETL]

Among my favorite old video games were Intellevision football, baseball, and horse racing. I think it was steeplechase horse racing, and tennis. Many other non-sports games as well.