by Grace Alexander

Created on: May 22, 2010

It's Pac-Man's 30th birthday! Search giant Google has commemorated the day with a playable 'Doodle' on their home page (the first playable Doodle ever!), and fans young and old around the world are rediscovering the famous arcade game in miniature.

 *  The Pac-Man  *

According to PacManHistory, Pac-Man was developed by a programmer named Itwani, who was eating pizza one day and decided that the shape left after removing one slice would make a great video game character whose sole purpose was to eat. Originally named 'Puck-Man', Itwani changed the name to avoid jokes about what would happen if the 'P' were altered to an 'F'.The Japanese company Namco released Pac-Man on May 22, 1980, and the game quickly became an arcade giant, eventually recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most successful arcade game of all-time.

 * The Monsters *

The four monsters that chase Pac-Man are said to be derived from a cartoon ghost monster from a 1960s TV series. the four ghosts are known outside Japan as Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde, and Itwani said in an interview published on PacManMuseum that they were the most difficult part of designing the game:

"The algorithm for the four ghosts who are dire enemies of the Pac Man ... was tricky because the monster movements are quite complex... I wanted each ghostly enemy to have a specific character and its own particular movements, so they weren't all just chasing after Pac Man in single file, which would have been tiresome and flat.

One of them, the red one called Blinky, did chase directly after Pac Man. The second ghost is positioned at a point a few dots in front of Pac Man's mouth... The other ghosts move more at random... [over the course of the game] the peaks and valleys in the curve of the [attack] wave become less pronounced so that the ghosts attack more frequently."

The red ghost, Blinky is the only one of the ghosts with a varying speed (despite Pinky's sometime moniker of 'Speedy'). When only a certain number of pellets remain, he enters what is known as 'Cruise Elroy' mode.

 * The Record Holders *

According to The National Post, only five people have ever achieved the arcade version of Pac-Man's highest possible score of 3,333,360: "Billy Mitchell (July 3, 1999), Rick Fothergill (July 31, 1999), Chris Ayra (February 16, 2000), Tim Balderramos (December 4, 2004) and Donald Hayes (July 21, 2005)."

The author of this article had a younger brother who could play the Atari version of Pac-Man at the highest speed level for hours - with the contrast turned down so that the Pac-Man and monsters were invisible. Only the pellets could be seen, with the occasional shadow passing in front of them all that remained to hint at the whereabouts of Pac-Man or his ghostly followers.

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