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The True Story of Pac Man -- and a Ton of Weird Theories · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
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Speaker 1: much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our favorite
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Speaker 1: video game ghost super producer, mister Max Williams.
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Speaker 2: Walker walk a Max sorry teenage riot.
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Speaker 1: Oh that's a cut I wasn't expecting, but I love it.
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Speaker 1: That's Noel Brown. I'm ben bowling before we go.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll tell you all that. Yeah, I've decided on
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Speaker 3: the next tattoo already.
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Speaker 2: Oh good.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's gonna be the third Empire symbol on the
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Speaker 3: inner bicep in.
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Speaker 2: The at arm. You know, you know, I don't. Is
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Speaker 2: it Star Trek related.
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Speaker 1: It's Claire obscure related, older scrolls, elder scrolls. That's right, okay,
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Speaker 1: you know all right, And thank you for not saying
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Speaker 1: inner thigh, which I thought you were about to describe.
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Speaker 2: Look.
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Speaker 1: Uh, we have a great research brief from our pal
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Speaker 1: friend of the show and north star Andrea, who I
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Speaker 1: don't think has a ridiculous street name yet.
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Speaker 2: No Andrea. The words the word carpenter, sharpentier.
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Speaker 1: Okay, I like a rhyme, you know, almost sucker for rhyme.
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Speaker 2: Nol. He had to, we had to do it to him,
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Speaker 2: or it might be pronounced sharpent a, in which case
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Speaker 2: she is the word carpenter.
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Speaker 1: All right. Uh, and Andrea, as we know, is one
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Speaker 1: of our go to correspondence for all things pop culture, novels.
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Speaker 2: Nerd culture, gaming comics. He's particularly a fan of and
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Speaker 2: I would argue that this is a great intersection of
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Speaker 2: those because we've got a lot of graphic art components
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Speaker 2: to some of these early video games that become iconic
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Speaker 2: and that really leave an imprint on art moving forward,
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Speaker 2: like the Space Invader guy you know that does all
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Speaker 2: the tags. Those are basically little blinky characters from the
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Speaker 2: pac Man games. Because they didn't have that much to
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Speaker 2: work with, they had to do a lot with a
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Speaker 2: little and make these things eye catching. M M.
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Speaker 1: One hundred percent. Yeah, And that's why a lot of
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Speaker 1: earlier video games are legendarily difficult because they couldn't make
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Speaker 1: the graphic super tasty, so don't had to make the
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Speaker 1: gameplay super difficult.
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Speaker 2: It's true, for sure. And then move a little later,
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Speaker 2: we started to see smovie tie in video games that
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Speaker 2: actually had a little bit more of a look that
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Speaker 2: matched the games because in the early days Atari and stuff.
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Speaker 2: You had to really use your imagination and stretch it
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Speaker 2: to its bounds to make the cover art match anything remotely,
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Speaker 2: you know what the gameplay was. The et MA is
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Speaker 2: a perfect example. But apparently the Lion King video game
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Speaker 2: for Sega Genesis is an example of a game that
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Speaker 2: was so punishingly difficult. It was designed to get kids
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Speaker 2: to continuously rent the game from Blockbuster Video.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and then we see another thing like, oh gosh,
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Speaker 1: what's a really difficult one? Captain Planet unfair because the
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Speaker 1: message was saving the world is hard, but they did it. Oh,
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Speaker 1: we're talking about a much more simplistic game today. We're
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Speaker 1: talking about pac Man. Who hasn't played it, who doesn't
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Speaker 1: enjoy it. It's not a huge commitment unless you're very
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Speaker 1: good at it. And it turns out, as Andrea taught
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Speaker 1: us recently, that pac has quite a complicated backstory. And
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Speaker 1: get this, it is forty five years old as of
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Speaker 1: May this year.
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Speaker 2: Only forty five. I know, I thought it would be older.
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Speaker 2: I thought it would be older too. That's just a
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Speaker 2: couple of years older than us. And Andrea did a
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Speaker 2: great job setting the tone for this episode, and this
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Speaker 2: brief with some still frame images from the Wonderful movie
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Speaker 2: based on a graphic novel series, Scott Pilgrim versus the World,
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Speaker 2: and a lot of us who are familiar with this
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Speaker 2: might have gotten the most I guess relatively obscure. A
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Speaker 2: bit of backstory for pac Man from a scene with
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Speaker 2: Scott played by what's his face Michael Sarah where he's
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Speaker 2: trying to impress a girl and he asks her, did
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Speaker 2: you know that the original name for pac Man was
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Speaker 2: puck Mann.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, you would think it was because he looks like
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Speaker 1: a hockey puck, but it actually comes from the Japanese
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Speaker 1: phrase pacu paku, which means to one's mouth open and closed.
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Speaker 1: Blah blah blah blah blah.
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Speaker 2: It is funny because it's one of those chicken or
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Speaker 2: the egg things where it's like, if they had called
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Speaker 2: him puck Man, would history have just reflected that and
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Speaker 2: just we would just that would be what we would
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Speaker 2: think of puck Man? Or your immediate thought is no,
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Speaker 2: that's just wrong. That would have been bad and it
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Speaker 2: would have been a failure. I don't know if that's
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Speaker 2: true or not, but it is interesting pac Man. Something
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Speaker 2: about it just does have a little bit more of
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Speaker 2: a ring to it, and I love that it's associated
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Speaker 2: with that automnopeia of the sound of flapping one's mouth
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Speaker 2: open and closed, which in Japan certainly would have resonated.
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Speaker 1: And it also brings us to an excellent segue into
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Speaker 1: the fan theory origin stories about the provenance of pac Man.
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Speaker 1: It turns out there's a lot of mythology surrounding the game,
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Speaker 1: the backstory of the man himself, the pac himself, and
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Speaker 1: other aspects of the world they build there. One of
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Speaker 1: our favorites is that both mister and Missus pac Man
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Speaker 1: are serial killers. This comes to us from The Daily
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Speaker 1: Show writer Dan McCoy.
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Speaker 2: That's true. Well are they killers though, or are they
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Speaker 2: ghost hunters?
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Speaker 1: So this is what Dan is pitching. While back he
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Speaker 1: went on Twitter, back when it was called Twitter, and
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Speaker 1: he said, guys, here's what I think. The pac Man
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Speaker 1: couple are serial killers, and they've been hiding their victims
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Speaker 1: under a maze, and the ghosts that are chasing them
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Speaker 1: are actually the spirits of their earlier victims, haunting them.
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Speaker 2: I appreciate what he's doing here. I appreciate the commitment
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Speaker 2: to the bit. I would argue that he is inserting
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Speaker 2: information that does not exist. I would say more likely
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Speaker 2: that pac Man and Miss pac Man are Ghostbuster type figures.
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Speaker 2: They're there to hoover up these spooky ghosts that are
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Speaker 2: out haunting the maze, which is, I guess, the world
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Speaker 2: in which they occupy. I do love this next point
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Speaker 2: that he makes though, which has always occurred to me
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Speaker 2: about this game and also Doctor Mario, where he's just
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Speaker 2: literally homeboys just chucking pills into the you know, the
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Speaker 2: puzzle window of the game. But yeah, we know pac
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Speaker 2: Man loves gobbling up these little pellets that a little
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Speaker 2: pill like themselves, aren't they.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, this one is uh, this one is more Internet
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Speaker 1: ephemera and we can't specifically trace it to Dan McCoy.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: The idea is that, like you said, no, old pac
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Speaker 1: Man is eating too many pellets aka drugs, and he's hallucinating,
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Speaker 1: so he's seen ghost because he's a party too hard.
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Speaker 1: And the other one, the other related theory is that
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Speaker 1: pac Man is in a club having too good of
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Speaker 1: a time and then he bumps into a ghost.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. Or another theory too, is that the creator of
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Speaker 2: pac Man, who has some addiction struggles himself, used this
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Speaker 2: as an elaborate metaphor of his time spent in rehab
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Speaker 2: being haunted by the ghosts of his addiction. I think
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Speaker 2: that's beautiful. I think it's a little unlikely, but you know,
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Speaker 2: maybe so man. Maybe it is like a total work
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Speaker 2: of art that is mirroring his struggle with pill addiction.
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Speaker 1: Or maybe it's fan fiction and there's nothing wrong with that.
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Speaker 1: We also want to shout out a Reddit user gm
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Speaker 1: Caros who does a little bit of multiversal world building.
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Speaker 1: It says that we all know the game Pong Pong
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Speaker 1: came out in nineteen seventy two, eight years before pac
8:35
Speaker 1: Man came out in nineteen eighty, and gm Caro says,
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Speaker 1: what if some balls from Pong fell off the sides
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Speaker 1: of the.
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Speaker 2: Board, which they do if you miss deflecting them, where
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Speaker 2: do they go?
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Speaker 1: Where do they go? Maybe they go on the pac
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Speaker 1: Man maze below, And maybe pac Man is our video
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Speaker 1: game Sissyphis and he just has to eat up these
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Speaker 1: lost balls forever.
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Speaker 2: Is he Sissyphis or is he the minota of the maize?
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Speaker 2: You know it? And he does have one eye? Does
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Speaker 2: he even have an eye?
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Speaker 1: Well, we are not the people to answer that question,
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Speaker 1: but it's also you know, it's a two D game,
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Speaker 1: right that doesn't have an eye in the original game.
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Speaker 2: He's just a yellow cheese wheel with one section removed. Yeah,
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Speaker 2: it's just a cheese pizza with one slice taken. And
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Speaker 2: now we go to sid Lexia, writing in February of
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Speaker 2: two thousand and eight, who gets a bit nihilistically philosophical
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Speaker 2: about pac Man. Sorry, I'm playing a web based version
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Speaker 2: of pac Man real quick right now, just to remind myself. So,
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Speaker 2: the ghosts are sort of like held in the middle
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Speaker 2: until they're released, and then you have to turn when
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Speaker 2: they're blue. You can eat them only when they turn blue,
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Speaker 2: and all the while you're gobbling up pills, and then
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Speaker 2: you also want to get the little bright shiny pills.
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Speaker 2: That's what turns them blue. Sorry, y'all, just reminding everyone
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Speaker 2: of how pac Man works. It's a pretty complex mechanic
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Speaker 2: if you think about how simple the game is. And
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Speaker 2: I've never gotten past like, you know, three or four stages.
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Speaker 2: It's not easy for sure.
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Speaker 1: Again, if you can't make it pretty, you can't make
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Speaker 1: it easy. So going back to sid Lexia, who says
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Speaker 1: the following quote, thus far the twenty first century has
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Speaker 1: been a sort of an odd time for video games.
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Speaker 1: We've seem drastic increases in graphical presentation, and it's becoming
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Speaker 1: increasingly probable that video games will offer up environments that
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Speaker 1: are visually indistinguishable from the real world within my lifetime.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, we're still not quite there, but we're getting there.
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Speaker 1: Prescient and and sid Lexi points out the games are
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Speaker 1: becoming more realistic in other areas to using special controls
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Speaker 1: that get you know what it reminds me of. No,
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Speaker 1: Sid here is referencing we Sports and Guitar Hero, but
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Speaker 1: it reminds me of especially of things like Microsoft Simulator
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Speaker 1: Flight Simulator, which I, as you know, in a continuing
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Speaker 1: weird side mission, I play that simulator a lot.
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Speaker 2: I know it's super cool man, and that's I mean
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Speaker 2: similar controls to the way you know, flight flighted vehicles
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Speaker 2: might operate to within other games Star Fucks and stuff
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Speaker 2: like that, right, m.
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Speaker 1: And then we go into an earlier conversation we had
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Speaker 1: on stuff they don't want you to know about the
11:28
Speaker 1: genre of things God.
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Speaker 2: God, Yeah, fascinating, which would include technically things like the
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Speaker 2: sims where you're sort of this you know, all knowing
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Speaker 2: unseen hand sort of moving the inhabitants of this world
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Speaker 2: that you've created through the paces of their day to
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Speaker 2: day lives. These games don't really require super super, super
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Speaker 2: super intense in depth, you know, high level graphics, because
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Speaker 2: it's more about the interface they've designed, uh and the
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Speaker 2: largeness the scale of the world. You know. Another good
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Speaker 2: example of that would be something like Minecraft, which is
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Speaker 2: a modern example of you know, using limitations to your benefit.
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Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah, well said. We also see that, sid Lexia.
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Speaker 1: After pointing out these breakthroughs and the studying escalation and
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Speaker 1: sophistication of video game technology, Sid finds that only one
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Speaker 1: game has ever managed to really address the authentic simulation
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Speaker 1: of the real world, by which this writer means the
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Speaker 1: quote complete futility of human existence in the Western line.
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Speaker 1: We told you it would be nihilistic that game, says
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Speaker 1: Sid Is pac Man, and our author here goes into depth,
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Speaker 1: but I think we go with the recap and let's
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Speaker 1: just put on our philosophy hats and maybe round robin
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Speaker 1: this one.
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Speaker 2: Your individual life on this planet is completely insignificant, and
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Speaker 2: it is largely characterized by the grim capitalist system that
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Speaker 2: you were born into. You are doomed to a miserable existence,
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Speaker 2: which will be spent endlessly collecting brightly colored consumer oriented products.
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Speaker 2: You can attempt to alleviate your sorrow with needles or pills,
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Speaker 2: but such efforts will inevitably fail. Furthermore, you are predestined
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Speaker 2: to die, and you will probably not accomplish anything of
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Speaker 2: merit before this occurs. So I guess technically, games like
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Speaker 2: pac Man are what you would call today roguelike games,
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Speaker 2: where the deal is that you will inevitably die. There
13:39
Speaker 2: is a you know, you want to push it as
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Speaker 2: far as you can go, you know, rack up as
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Speaker 2: many points, but the nature of the game is that
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Speaker 2: you are predestined for expiration.
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Speaker 1: For failure again Sisaphian.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, correct, just jump in here. Roguelike traditionally being that
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Speaker 3: it will always reset, you don't haveesothetically die. So for example,
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Speaker 3: like Blue Prince, which is a new puzzle rogue leg game,
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Speaker 3: you could win, but you can't just keep playing it.
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Speaker 3: We'll restart.
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Speaker 2: Okay, so it's no wait a minute, aren't there? But
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Speaker 2: aren't there? So you know what I mean? Technically, You
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Speaker 2: know a pac Man involves a dungeon. That pac Man
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Speaker 2: is a dungeon and crawl is it not? It kind
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Speaker 2: of very much, is yeah.
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Speaker 1: And this is where they continue and say, so, now
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Speaker 1: that you know your life is pointless, you might as
14:28
Speaker 1: well do what pac Man does. Go cry in the corner.
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Speaker 2: Ouch. Ouch. Shit. He does sort of cry at the end,
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Speaker 2: doesn't he. He's got little tears that squirt on out.
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Speaker 2: So when down the stown there. So, now that we've
14:48
Speaker 2: wrapped our heads around what type of game this is
14:51
Speaker 2: and sort of what came from it, it's true endless
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Speaker 2: cry in the Yes, it's this endless loop, right, That
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Speaker 2: is the nature of the pac Man game. It is
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Speaker 2: the Sisyphian struggle. So he's crying in the corner after
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Speaker 2: he you know, needs a little break from this endless
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Speaker 2: cycle of you know, absolutely defeated by life. So there
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Speaker 2: is a little trick, however, that he can employ when
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Speaker 2: a new level starts. Going back to the text, move
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Speaker 2: pac Man one space to the right and three spaces up,
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Speaker 2: then stop. The ghosts will leave him alone for about
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Speaker 2: fifteen minutes or so. It's true. This is wow. It's
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Speaker 2: a credit Nobo.
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Speaker 1: So say continues when your feeling like life is completely
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Speaker 1: hopeless and it is, disagree with it, find yourself a
15:38
Speaker 1: cozy little corner to cry in. I can't guarantee that
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Speaker 1: your demons will leave you alone for at least fifteen minutes,
15:45
Speaker 1: but you'll feel a lot better regardless. So now we're
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Speaker 1: going past philosophy into literature. Right at this point, this
15:53
Speaker 1: is a weird meditation on pac Man.
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Speaker 2: I think this is fantastic and i'd see and I
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Speaker 2: see all of these parallels, whether there are intentional or not,
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Speaker 2: it absolutely holds, and I think it works beautifully.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it squares with the reality of the game. And
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Speaker 1: before Lexia comes along, there's a publication called Trigger Happy
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Speaker 1: by Stephen Poole. It's a book entirely about video games,
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Speaker 1: and here pull kind of dovetails with the concepts later
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Speaker 1: proposed by Lexia. Because Poole says pac Man again, I
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Speaker 1: keep I introduced, and I keep using word Sisipian. But
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Speaker 1: pac Man is on this endless quest to become whole,
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Speaker 1: consumed by consumerism and therefore never achieving true satisfaction. Interesting.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's mega interesting, Ben, And I mean also
16:46
Speaker 2: considering the uh particulars of the Japanese rat race, you
16:53
Speaker 2: know what I mean? Like it is, I can see
16:56
Speaker 2: how this maybe even would have hit home on a
16:59
Speaker 2: cultural line, you know over there, right, because I mean,
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Speaker 2: like we talk about salarymen literally passing out in subways
17:05
Speaker 2: because they've had to drink their bosses under the table
17:08
Speaker 2: as part of the sort of social contract of you know,
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Speaker 2: business life. These things are non negotiable, right.
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Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, we jumped in so quickly to the
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Speaker 1: fan theories. We've got to just say it plainly. We
17:21
Speaker 1: mentioned pac Man, originally called puck Man, was made in
17:25
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty. It was made by Namco, and it was
17:28
Speaker 1: made in Japan. As you said, Nol, here's what's happening.
17:32
Speaker 1: If you've never played pac Man. You control a guy
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Speaker 1: called pac Man who looks like an incomplete pizza pie.
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Speaker 1: You have to eat all these dots inside this maze,
17:41
Speaker 1: and you have to avoid four differently colored ghosts. There
17:44
Speaker 1: are larger flashing dots called power pellets, which caused the
17:48
Speaker 1: ghost to be called vulnerable to pac Man's insatiable appetite.
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Speaker 1: At some point, turn blue, turn blue. Yeah, just so,
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Speaker 1: And now we go back to fan theories. I had
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Speaker 1: not heard this one. There's the idea that pac Man
18:06
Speaker 1: is supposed to be an oyster taking back lost pearls
18:10
Speaker 1: and that the ghost or jellyfish interesting. I mean, I
18:15
Speaker 1: can see it. The art somewhat ambiguous.
18:18
Speaker 2: I can see it too, But nah, I think they're
18:21
Speaker 2: definitely ghosts.
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Speaker 1: I think they're supposed to be ghost I think the
18:26
Speaker 1: creators would have said they were supposed to be jellyfish.
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Speaker 2: If that was the case. There's no other nautical themes
18:33
Speaker 2: to it, and they could have accomplished that with the
18:36
Speaker 2: resources they had in terms of the coding of it all,
18:38
Speaker 2: but there's nothing else implying that. I think the absurdness
18:42
Speaker 2: of it, the ridiculousness, if you will, is part and
18:45
Speaker 2: parcel with the whole concept of pac Man. It's like,
18:47
Speaker 2: what is this weird little round dude doing chasing around ghosts?
18:52
Speaker 2: If it's not a metaphor for, you know, the futility
18:55
Speaker 2: of the capitalist existence. I love the absurdity of it.
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Speaker 1: I think the futility argument is probably the best so far.
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Speaker 1: We can move past some of the maritime stuff. We
19:07
Speaker 1: can go even deeper and look at YouTubers Loxton and
19:12
Speaker 1: Noggan in particular, they said, what about this, What if
19:16
Speaker 1: the game pac Man is occurring on a microscopic level
19:20
Speaker 1: inside the human body? What if pac Man is a
19:24
Speaker 1: white blood cell that's trying to destroy germs aka the
19:28
Speaker 1: pellets and protect the host against viruses the ghost see.
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Speaker 2: Now that would I'd be down with that if it
19:36
Speaker 2: wasn't accomplished so well, no, maybe it's the inspiration because
19:40
Speaker 2: Doctor Mario would have been much later. But that is
19:42
Speaker 2: literally what Doctor Mario is about. You are throwing these
19:45
Speaker 2: pills in and and you know, matching them up in
19:48
Speaker 2: order to destroy these germs that stack up as the
19:52
Speaker 2: you know, the tetrasy kind of puzzled window fills up
19:56
Speaker 2: with pieces. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. And then these YouTubers also say, well, the ghosts
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Speaker 1: do vanish when pac Man clears a level, which could
20:06
Speaker 1: mean the cell is cleared of all germs and the
20:10
Speaker 1: box in the middle maybe ground zero for the infection,
20:14
Speaker 1: which is why these viruses the ghosts come back to
20:17
Speaker 1: the source after pac Man eats them. I don't know
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Speaker 1: it's internally consistent. Let's say that because a lot of
20:25
Speaker 1: these metaphors or these deeper analogies do explain everything that
20:31
Speaker 1: happens in the game, right.
20:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I mean, at least we're talking about
20:35
Speaker 2: the mechanics of it all. I would not say that.
20:38
Speaker 2: I mean, aren't are there cut scenes in between clearing stages?
20:42
Speaker 1: You get a little dopamine hit for sure?
20:45
Speaker 2: Fair enough. I guess what I'm saying is, I don't
20:46
Speaker 2: think they're going out of their way, at least in
20:48
Speaker 2: the early iterations of pac Man to impart any like
20:51
Speaker 2: particular lore from.
20:53
Speaker 1: The right exactly, not to go too dark. But it's
20:57
Speaker 1: not as though you complete a level and then it
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Speaker 1: cuts to a pixelated picture of someone in a hospital
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Speaker 1: getting better.
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Speaker 2: You know, that would be funny though, or yeah, dark,
21:08
Speaker 2: maybe funny is the wrong word. They're getting better, they're
21:12
Speaker 2: getting dark at all, Yeah Smith, let's talk about dark. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 2: I mean it's amazing, No, not not not to be
21:23
Speaker 2: a child, it's a it's it's the name that he
21:26
Speaker 2: was blessed with, and I'm sure he wears it proudly.
21:28
Speaker 2: Saturday Morning Breakfast cereals as well. Right, this was a
21:33
Speaker 2: Gagga Day webcomic s NBC that started in two and
21:37
Speaker 2: continues on to this day. Reimagine pac Man as a
21:40
Speaker 2: horror story, much like There's an Incredible Weather Garfield. Garfield
21:45
Speaker 2: as a Lovecraftian monster monstrosity, you know, absolutely terrorizing what's
21:50
Speaker 2: his buddy's name, John Ody John. Yeah, I require Lasagna
21:54
Speaker 2: John exactly. So they're doing something similar here with pac Man,
21:57
Speaker 2: imagining it as a horror story. I mean, he is relentless.
22:02
Speaker 2: I could see him instead of having the mouth flapping,
22:04
Speaker 2: having like a knife and right, you know, so I
22:08
Speaker 2: can see where they're going with this, where people in
22:10
Speaker 2: this world exist only as giant mouth, which is a
22:12
Speaker 2: bit love crafty and able to do nothing but consume
22:15
Speaker 2: while being attacked by jealous mouthless ghosts who can no
22:20
Speaker 2: longer eat their hungry ghosts.
22:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love that reference, and technically it would
22:26
Speaker 1: be envious, but we're fun at parties, so let's keep going. Tarker,
22:31
Speaker 1: there's an awesome graphic novel called Nameless that God that Speaks.
22:36
Speaker 2: This is unpleasant read, but very good.
22:41
Speaker 1: Hey, what do you think happens at the end of Nameless?
22:43
Speaker 1: Nol We haven't talked about this.
22:45
Speaker 2: I don't know if I need to reread it, but
22:47
Speaker 2: I just remember it's definitely like seriously fed up, like
22:51
Speaker 2: event Horizon level stuff in that particular book, like a
22:56
Speaker 2: you know, space as portal to Hell again.
23:00
Speaker 1: A rollicking buddy comedy appropriate for all ages. Real swashbuckler,
23:06
Speaker 1: A real swash buckler.
23:08
Speaker 2: It's kind of a rom com.
23:10
Speaker 1: We are lying, do not give that to your children
23:14
Speaker 1: unless they are edgy teenagers. But we were bringing these up,
23:18
Speaker 1: these references because there is another darker analog inspired by
23:23
Speaker 1: pac Man. An artist named Travis Pitt had this just
23:29
Speaker 1: fantastic artistic subversion of pac Man, depicting the entire lore
23:35
Speaker 1: as a crew of astronauts sent to a research facility
23:40
Speaker 1: where every one of them except for one guy, the
23:43
Speaker 1: yellow suited guy, gets murdered, and our surviving astronaut, pac Man,
23:48
Speaker 1: is then chased through the byzantine halls of the laboratory
23:54
Speaker 1: of the spaceship and is being chased by the ghost
23:59
Speaker 1: of his former fellow astronauts.
24:02
Speaker 2: People are really wanted. They're digging deep some of these,
24:05
Speaker 2: That's all I'm saying.
24:06
Speaker 1: Oh well, I think I think Travis here is not
24:09
Speaker 1: saying that's what happened.
24:10
Speaker 2: It said, another fun interpretation for sure. Yeah, there's definitely
24:13
Speaker 2: different ways to slice it. I like it. I like
24:16
Speaker 2: after the fact because that's the beauty of like open
24:18
Speaker 2: ended art or art that allows you to insert your
24:22
Speaker 2: own narrative into it and isn't so I mean, because
24:24
Speaker 2: you know, let's be real, pac Man is a work
24:26
Speaker 2: of art. It's really cool, the design of it, the
24:29
Speaker 2: iconic ghost images, the color palettes, you know. I mean,
24:34
Speaker 2: that's all there in that first game, in that simple design,
24:38
Speaker 2: and it's like that alone. There hasn't really been there.
24:41
Speaker 2: Certainly have been spinoffs of pac Man, and you can
24:43
Speaker 2: play as pac Man in like Super Smash Brothers, and yeah,
24:46
Speaker 2: there have been cartoons and all of that, but when
24:50
Speaker 2: we think of pac Man, largely we think of this one.
24:53
Speaker 2: We think of the old school, eating the pills, chasing
24:56
Speaker 2: the ghosts. You know, original.
25:05
Speaker 1: Speak of subversion. We subverted the order of the story
25:08
Speaker 1: here because we're giving you the cool, deep, sometimes disturbing
25:12
Speaker 1: philosophical interpretations. But we were telling you the truth at
25:17
Speaker 1: the beginning, folks, as we reference Scott Pilgrim versus the World. Yes,
25:22
Speaker 1: there is a true story about pac Man, who was
25:24
Speaker 1: originally called puck Man, and it did come from the
25:28
Speaker 1: name pacopacu or the phrase.
25:30
Speaker 2: Meaning to gobble things up. And we thankfully saved this
25:34
Speaker 2: for the end here there's another detail that led them
25:37
Speaker 2: to calling it pac Man instead of puck Man. Think
25:40
Speaker 2: about it, Think about some little naughty little scamps going
25:45
Speaker 2: around with their sharpies and at the arcade, defacing the
25:49
Speaker 2: side of these giant machines. It would be a very
25:52
Speaker 2: simple maneuver to change that puck to you another a
25:57
Speaker 2: naughty word.
25:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're not calling it puck fan, just so you know.
26:01
Speaker 1: So that was that was the concern, and they change
26:05
Speaker 1: it to pac Man because it sounded close to the
26:07
Speaker 1: original Japanese name Pakuman, and the design, as we mentioned,
26:13
Speaker 1: was conceptualized initially by Toru Iwatani. Tou Iwatani led the
26:20
Speaker 1: team in nineteen seventy nine to create the game, and
26:25
Speaker 1: Iwatani wanted it to have universal appeal to women and men,
26:30
Speaker 1: and at the time that they were working on pac
26:33
Speaker 1: Man or Pakuman, they were they saw a market opportunity
26:38
Speaker 1: because a lot of contemporary games were based on war
26:44
Speaker 1: or sports, which they saw as traditionally male interest.
26:49
Speaker 2: And I'm not trying to necessarily, you know, psychoanalyte that
26:53
Speaker 2: was going on here, but it does occur to me
26:54
Speaker 2: that those types of games that you're talking about, like
26:58
Speaker 2: war games and drive games and more masculine games, because
27:02
Speaker 2: of the technology of the time, they didn't look particularly immersive.
27:07
Speaker 2: They it was a sort of like a video game
27:09
Speaker 2: version of battleship. We're dealing with like a grid or
27:12
Speaker 2: these tiny little icons and things that are sort of
27:14
Speaker 2: representative of these sporting events or war. But a game
27:19
Speaker 2: like this that purely creates its own world and sort
27:22
Speaker 2: of defines the terms of what it's showing you, it's
27:26
Speaker 2: a lot easier to become immersive, and I think that's
27:28
Speaker 2: why the original design has stood the test of time. Originally,
27:33
Speaker 2: this idea of a world occupied by these like moving mouths.
27:38
Speaker 2: He saw a pizza pie Iwatanievic originally with a slice missing,
27:43
Speaker 2: and that to him resembled an open mouth. And thinking
27:47
Speaker 2: along the lines of like, what would be a simple,
27:49
Speaker 2: easily communicatable, iconic image that could be communicated with the
27:55
Speaker 2: limitations of this early video game, you know, programming in
27:59
Speaker 2: pixel count.
28:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, the fancy word for that is peridolia.
28:03
Speaker 2: Paradolia, Yeah, where you see faces in weird such like
28:07
Speaker 2: the backs of trucks, and you know, the hooks on
28:10
Speaker 2: the wall look like a little drunken fighting squid.
28:12
Speaker 1: The reason cars have two headlights largely a face on
28:16
Speaker 1: mars so on Iwatani is also saying, hey, this reminds
28:21
Speaker 1: me of a word in Japanese language, or a character kuchi,
28:25
Speaker 1: which means mouth. Ku Chi, we would spell it here
28:29
Speaker 1: and says, look, the original Japanese character that means mouth
28:34
Speaker 1: has a square shape, so why don't I just round
28:37
Speaker 1: it out. And then to our earlier question about eyes,
28:40
Speaker 1: he said, look, we could have put eyes on it,
28:43
Speaker 1: but eventually we decided to keep it simple. And he
28:48
Speaker 1: talks about this. He says, one lunchtime, I was quite
28:51
Speaker 1: hungry and I ordered a whole pizza epic iwatani nice one,
28:56
Speaker 1: and he says, I helped myself to a wedge and
28:59
Speaker 1: what was left was the idea for the pac Man's shape.
29:03
Speaker 1: So he steers away from sports themes or shooter games,
29:06
Speaker 1: and he says, I want something non violent. I want
29:11
Speaker 1: colorful characters with cheerful music. I want couples and families
29:17
Speaker 1: to play games at the arcade together. This makes more money. Also,
29:21
Speaker 1: I got a point out. I don't know about you guys,
29:23
Speaker 1: but being an entity that can be given to anxiety,
29:27
Speaker 1: I do find pac Man stressful, especially as you get
29:31
Speaker 1: further in right and the ghosts get faster.
29:34
Speaker 3: All these games are so stressful. Mario Man I mean,
29:38
Speaker 3: I guess Donkey Kong, but like all the old games,
29:41
Speaker 3: the quarters eads are just so stressful quarter eaders.
29:45
Speaker 2: Yeah.
29:46
Speaker 1: But the good news is this works for Iwatani and
29:50
Speaker 1: the team, so much so that in nineteen eighty two,
29:54
Speaker 1: just two years later, they create Miss pac Man as
29:58
Speaker 1: a specific explain said thank you to female gamers for
30:03
Speaker 1: their enthusiasm about pac Man, and they changed her name too.
30:07
Speaker 1: She was going to be called pac Woman.
30:09
Speaker 2: Mm, but instead she's miss right, isn't she miss or
30:13
Speaker 2: she misses?
30:14
Speaker 1: Well, she's yeah, she's Miss pac Man.
30:17
Speaker 2: If you're nasty, oh fair enough. But is it the
30:19
Speaker 2: implication that they're a couple.
30:22
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah uh they they they originally
30:27
Speaker 1: wanted to call her Miss pac Man, but they had
30:30
Speaker 1: included a baby pac Man because why not, And so
30:34
Speaker 1: they they didn't want to apply that she gave birth
30:38
Speaker 1: out of wedlock, so they called her ms pac Man,
30:44
Speaker 1: which I guess made it sound like they were married.
30:46
Speaker 1: But here miss and Ms dot are the same thing,
30:50
Speaker 1: so it'd have to be missus pac Man for us anyway,
30:54
Speaker 1: lost to history. Originally, Miss pac Man was going to
30:58
Speaker 1: be a redhead, but the guy who was in charge
31:01
Speaker 1: of Namco at the time, Masaka Nakamura said, Nope, don't
31:06
Speaker 1: make her a redhead. Give her a bow and give
31:08
Speaker 1: her a Cindy Crawford esque beauty mark or Marilyn Monroe
31:12
Speaker 1: esque beauty mark, whatever you wish, and so we said.
31:15
Speaker 1: The work on this started in nineteen seventy nine. It
31:18
Speaker 1: took a year and five months to make it. At
31:21
Speaker 1: this point, this was the longest development time for a
31:25
Speaker 1: video game ever. Butthesda, looking at you, where is the
31:32
Speaker 1: Next Elder scrolls?
31:34
Speaker 3: Probably five to ten years.
31:35
Speaker 2: Jesus, some people, it's in.
31:39
Speaker 3: They have confirmed it's in. When they released the Oblivion
31:44
Speaker 3: Remastered they confirmed that it's in production, which is I
31:47
Speaker 3: guess new because it had been We don't even know
31:50
Speaker 3: where it's set at technically yet.
31:51
Speaker 1: Right, there are rumors, but also we're we're roasting with
31:56
Speaker 1: a light roast and a lot of affections alike, roast
32:00
Speaker 1: good things take time, right, uh so apparently the lighter
32:04
Speaker 1: the roast, the more caffeine and the bean. That is correct, Yes, yes, yes,
32:10
Speaker 1: here's the other idea.
32:11
Speaker 2: I didn't mean for that to rhyme, but I'm here
32:13
Speaker 2: for him. I love it.
32:13
Speaker 1: I love a rhyme. So Awatani is honest about his inspirations.
32:18
Speaker 1: He says the idea of pac Man consuming energy pellets
32:22
Speaker 1: came to him from the video game based on Popeye
32:26
Speaker 1: the Sailor Man. We get a boost after eating his
32:30
Speaker 1: little pellet, his can spinach and spinach pellets.
32:34
Speaker 2: He fights to the finish, but he only ate you
32:36
Speaker 2: only ever ate can spinach, right, which's weird because he
32:39
Speaker 2: had he squeezed it out of the can and then
32:41
Speaker 2: it just shot up in the air.
32:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, Karkar Kherkar exactly. So the ghost, he further says,
32:50
Speaker 1: came from his own personal admiration of Casper the friendly ghost.
32:56
Speaker 1: And those fruit bonuses that get you more points were
33:00
Speaker 1: surprise inspired by slot machines.
33:04
Speaker 2: Slot machines, huh okay, Yeah, yeah, he's a man who's
33:09
Speaker 2: lived a life, that's right. But also, like we know
33:12
Speaker 2: that slot machines are so inherently designed to elicit those
33:17
Speaker 2: dopamine hits. They're sort of the first to market with
33:20
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff, so it definitely makes sense. Also,
33:23
Speaker 2: the cherries and the bells and all the little icons
33:26
Speaker 2: the slot machines show on those little revolving what do
33:30
Speaker 2: you call them cylinders? I guess that was something that
33:33
Speaker 2: also was able to be kind of co opted a
33:35
Speaker 2: little bit.
33:36
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. Yeah, And there's a funny anecdote about
33:40
Speaker 1: Iwatani sitting together with the team that was doing sound
33:44
Speaker 1: design and this guy, this absolute legend, sits down with
33:49
Speaker 1: the sound designers and he has fruit with them and
33:53
Speaker 1: he says, here's the sound pac Man should make. And
33:56
Speaker 1: he noisily eats I think crutches, gurgles, and he's like, this.
34:02
Speaker 2: Is this is This guy didn't have misophonius, I know, right,
34:05
Speaker 2: got it.
34:06
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the last things I want to mention
34:09
Speaker 1: here as we're wrapping up, is that the concept of
34:13
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence plays a big role in pac Man. The
34:17
Speaker 1: ghosts are not steered by other players. Their movements are
34:23
Speaker 1: described by their names exactly.
34:27
Speaker 2: I've been itching to get to this. We've got a
34:29
Speaker 2: shadow Blinky, who always chases pac Man. We've got Speedy
34:34
Speaker 2: aka Pinky, who tries to get ahead of him. Each
34:38
Speaker 2: of them have their own kind of like football players,
34:40
Speaker 2: sort of flanking maneuvers, right, they're doing like plays, they're
34:44
Speaker 2: sort of like trying to Yeah. I never really thought
34:45
Speaker 2: about that, but it's true. They all do have their
34:47
Speaker 2: own kind of set of moves. That's fascinating. We've got
34:50
Speaker 2: bashful or Inky, who uses a more complicated strategy to
34:54
Speaker 2: really hone in. Then we have Pokey or Clyde who
34:57
Speaker 2: alternates between chasing him and running away. Yeah.
35:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the Japanese names translate to chase, ambush, thickle
35:06
Speaker 1: and playing dumb. Pretty cool stuff.
35:09
Speaker 2: Super cool. I it never even occurred to me that
35:12
Speaker 2: they all do different things, but they very much do. No,
35:15
Speaker 2: it's immediately apparent now that I'm thinking about it.
35:17
Speaker 1: Oh, and we do have to mention to the thing
35:19
Speaker 1: about cutscenes. There are intermissions between levels. Now, they're not
35:23
Speaker 1: that I.
35:23
Speaker 2: Remember, Yeah, little bits, certainly not on the level of
35:28
Speaker 2: what we think of today, but sort of like occupying
35:32
Speaker 2: a similar space, creating a little bit of transition, maybe
35:35
Speaker 2: a little bit of lore as to the interaction between
35:38
Speaker 2: these characters.
35:39
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Yeah, And this is one of the first
35:41
Speaker 1: games to deploy that strategy. All of the stuff we're
35:45
Speaker 1: describing worked. Pac Man soon became a huge household name
35:50
Speaker 1: on the level of Mickey Mouse. Like we said earlier,
35:53
Speaker 1: he got his own Saturday Morning cartoon merchandise out the wazoo,
35:59
Speaker 1: and we're PG thirteen show. But Pacman also got a
36:05
Speaker 1: cover spread and a hustler Pacman Fox just saying there
36:11
Speaker 1: was a cookbook released just this year, The Pacman The
36:16
Speaker 1: Official Cookbook featuring amazing choppable recipes.
36:23
Speaker 2: Heck yeah. And by the way, I found like a
36:26
Speaker 2: sort of a collection on Pacman dot fandom dot com
36:29
Speaker 2: of all of the cut scenes, and there are a ton,
36:33
Speaker 2: and they all have our little skits basically between you know,
36:37
Speaker 2: you start getting into the meet cute of Pacman and
36:41
Speaker 2: Miss Pacman in Miss Pacman, of course, but you have
36:44
Speaker 2: little funny interactions between the ghosts and uh and then
36:49
Speaker 2: Pacman and Misspacman. And if you go to they're called
36:52
Speaker 2: coffee breaks actually, so if you go to Pacman dot
36:54
Speaker 2: fandom dot com slash wikislash Coffee Underscore break, you can
36:58
Speaker 2: see a breakdown of what happens in each one of these.
37:01
Speaker 2: And I would argue they are absolutely proto cutscenes.
37:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, world building. We love to see it. We love
37:07
Speaker 1: to see it here and everywhere else. We also can't
37:11
Speaker 1: thank you enough for joining us today, folks, but here
37:14
Speaker 1: we go. Thank you, thank you, yeah, thank you. Thanks
37:17
Speaker 1: also to our super producer, mister Max Williams. Our research
37:21
Speaker 1: associate for this. Andrea and who.
37:24
Speaker 2: Else who else who wilse oh geez, Christopherracios. Name is
37:27
Speaker 2: Jeff Coats here in spirit. Jonathan Strickland, the Quizzler, AJ Mohamas,
37:31
Speaker 2: Jacobs the Puzzler.
37:33
Speaker 1: Doctor Rachel Big Spinach, Lance the world's number one authority
37:37
Speaker 1: on underwater explosions, and Noel.
37:39
Speaker 2: Thanks to you, Ron, you as well, Buddy. We'll see
37:42
Speaker 2: you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
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Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
37:54
Speaker 2: your favorite shows,