Pac-Man: The Joy of Movement
I play a level of Pacman at least once a day, and recently discovered Pacman-99 for my Nintendo Switch. I wanna make sure it’s clear that I am not an online gamer by any means. At least 90% of the games I play are story-driven single-player games like Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Final Fantasy 16, Death Stranding, Resident Evil 4 Remake, Pikmin, and Doom Eternal. The idea of going online and playing with strangers is a foreign concept that I have actively avoided because, honestly, I prefer solitude. Explain to me then why I have begun playing Pacman-99 and playing round after round of the game with complete strangers, relishing in watching my name rise up the leaderboard from the high 60s to recently hitting number 11 in one round?
Or at least I did until Nintendo shut the server down.
I don’t mind telling you when I found out it was over I made a sound similar to the one PacMan makes when bumping into one of the ghosts.
I could also ask why I paid $10 for the Gameboy version of the original game, and also $8 for both versions of the Atari transfer of the game, $25 for the Pac-Man amiibo figure, another $25 for a Nintendo Switch copy of PacMan World Re-Pac, and then $50 for a copy of the book Pac-Man: Birth of an Icon. I guess I could ask why I find myself playing a round of Pac-Man at least once a day. I could ask why when I googled Pac-Man and saw that the playable Google-Doodle was the first thing that popped up I had to stop everything I was doing and play it (It’s pretty fun). I could ask myself why when I open emulators I try to find every version of Pac-Man that I can find and play them.
The answer to all of these questions is painfully obvious once I stop, look at this behavior, and reflect on it: Pac-Man is fun to play because the character Pac-Man is fun to move.
That leads me to the next question though.
Why is it so fun to move Pacman?
I mean it. Why is it so fun?
Designed by Toru Iwatani (The Dude of Dudes as far as I’m concerned), Pac-Man was published by Bandai Namco Entertainment in July of 1980 in Japan. The character was originally called “Puck-Man” because of the sounds he made while eating the white pellets in the maze; “pucku-pucku” is a japanese onomatopoeia for eating ravenously. And on the note of eating, despite the legend that Toru Iwatani’s inspiration for the character was when he saw a pizza with one slice missing, the man has always stated that he actually based the character’s design on the Japanese character “Kuchi” which means mouth. Iwatani turned the character on its side and curved the edges. When the videogame arrived in the United States in December of 1980, Namco executives changed the name to “Pac-Man” fearing that people would vandalize the machine and name it “Fuck-Man.” This didn’t actually stop anybody from doing that, and now we have a beautiful reference in Scott Pilgrim.
I should be honest and confess that I’ve never actually watched Scott Pilgrim.
My girlfriend’s watched Scott Pilgrim though, and one of my best friends has the “Fuck-Man” arcade cabinet tattoed on his leg, so I’m going to say that that counts as getting the reference.
Players loved the game and it created a sensation that revolutionized the arcade industry which had, at that point, been struggling because of the perception that they were havens for juvenile delinquents and also exclusively places for men and boys. Iwatani knew this and specifically designed the game to not include anything related to war and/or firearms, and also incorporated bright colors.
Girls loved colors. Girls loved Pac-Man.
Women loved colors. Women loved Pac-Man.
The rest as they say, whoever they are and whatever it is they say or supposedly say, is history. Though on that note, there’s too many essays on the internet talking about the history and legacy of Pac-Man so I’m going to get back to my questions…once I’ve explained what the videogame is actually about.
Pac-Man is a yellow circle with no eyes and a wedge cut out that acts as his open mouth. He exists in a maze that is black with walls that are ultramarine blue, and there are in this maze 244 white pellets that he needs to consume, four of which are larger and referred to as “power pellets.” Eating these four are important because, in the middle of the maze, there is a box filled with four “ghosts” who are referred to as Shadow, Speedy, Bashful, and Pokey but are more often known for their western names Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde. The ghosts will eventually leave the maze and wander about before their AI software shifts and they begin to chase Pac-Man trying to stop him from eating. If the ghosts manage to catch Pac-Man the game is over and the character will implode on himself making the famous “wah-wah-wah-wah-wah, whump-whump.”
It’s pretty easy, once one has played at least one game of Pac-Man to understand why it’s had the success it has. Pac-Man is, simply put, fun to play. The colors of the characters, the sounds of Pac-Man gobbling the pellets or else dying after getting caught, and the thrill of being chased by the ghosts all works so beautifully together to create an experience that’s fun. Even after losing again and again and again I cannot tire of the sensation of playing Pac-Man. There’s an energy I get from rounding a corner of the maze, avoiding Pinky as she’s just about to collide with me, the pleasure of invulnerability as I consume a power pellet and push through Clyde, or simply watching Pac-Man consume a row of pellets while the ghosts reorient and prepare for a new attack.
And somewhere in this I begin to realize why this is so fun.
Playing Pac-Man is like playing with a rubber-band.
I wrote an essay a while back about the non-playable-character(npc) Dr. Salvador from the videogame Resident Evil 4 Remake. My point in that essay was to try and understand how Dr. Salvador worked in that game as a design structure, and what the physical sensation of playing that game is whenever he’s in the room with me. In that essay I layed out a basic “equation” which I’ll include below:
tension=excitement and contact=defeat.
I do want to make it clear, I’m not the first person in ludology or videogame commentary and criticism who has had this thought or else expressed this concept. I’d like to think I’m the first of this bunch of beautiful nerds to use a mathematical structure for rhetorical purposes but I know as soon as I finish writing this sentence I’ll stumble across an essay by someone who had the exact thought 40 years ago before I was even sperm. This equation works as an answer to my question because as soon as I ask why is it fun to move Pac-Man, this formula reminds me that as long as I’m moving in Pac-Man I’m actually playing the videogame.
When Pac-man stops the game stops.
When the game stops I stop, and I’m no longer in the experience.
The tension in the game is created by avoiding the ghosts who alternate between their scatter and pursuit periods. As each ghost leaves the central box they will scatter to one of the four corners of the maze and move about until their pursuit programming kicks in and they will begin to chase Pac-Man trying to bump into him. This is honestly one of the best parts of the game, and my favorite point because once I become aware that the ghosts are chasing me my movement becomes far more engaging. What I mean is, eating the pellets during the scatter period is fun, but more often than not it’s more about just moving through the maze. Once the pursuit starts the tension increases and I begin to calculate my movements and paying attention to where I’m going.
Since Pac-Man is moving through a maze, movement is typically composed of just moving forward or else turning at 90 degree angles. These turns can be the stuff of delightful nightmares because, depending on the ghost, I can find myself cornered rather quickly. The colors only build this tension more since they are bright and dark. The blue and black of the maze numb my eyes so that I’m forced to fixate on the bright yellow, red, pink, blue, and orange of the characters, at times almost forgetting the maze entirely. The movement of Pac-Man creates tension against the limits of the maze and the ghosts make that tension juicer. The sounds of Pacman eating, and the way the sound speeds up when I get closer to the last pellet stretches the tension as I work closer and closer to the last pellet. Eating power pellets create a temporary sense of invulnerability and the limited time creates further tension. I have to try and eat as much as I can in this short window, and if I can get all four ghosts in one area before eating it I can rack up 1600 points by eating them in their new vulnerable state. This creates plenty of stressfully fun moments as I try to let the ghosts chase me until they are right on top of me, and if I cannot eat it in time I will die.
The sensation of playing Pacman is like stretching a series of rubber bands, one after the other, and watching them snapback. It’s a virtual fidget-cube-videogame that is seemingly endless.
At least until you hit level 256.
But that’s another essay.
All of this tension building can make the defeat of “contact” at first seem like an anti-climax, but I mean this honestly: Pac-Man is so well crafted even losing the game is enjoyable. This is due to the sound Pac-Man makes when he is caught and the game and the character implodes. When Pac-Man stops he makes a series of sounds that are iconic, the “wah-wah-wah-wah-wah, whump-whump.” It sounds like Pac-Man is crying at his defeat, or else he is being sucked down into oblivion and pleading for help. I described his body as “imploding,” but this is really just a convenient verb. Really Pac-Man folds in on himself, the empty space of his mouth slowly stretching back until each end of his jaws have retreated 360 degrees to their origin. It’s a kind of reverse ouroboros that would be frightening if it were presented in a more photorealistic style.
Then again, this is the internet and fanart exists.
Pac-Man’s death sequence is a beautiful exhale after a solid stretch of holding my breath, continually navigating every corner of the maze hoping desperately I can hold out for a few moments more.
I believe I’ve provided one good argument to explain why Pac-Man is so fun to move. But I hope my reader will indulge me with a few more sentences.
Videogames have tried throughout their existence to recreate through digital simulation the sensation of motion, and those games which have made moving their main verb impacted players in profound ways. Pac-Man established a rhythm of gameplay that later designers continually found inspiration from. John Carmack and John Romero both regularly played Pac-Man while writing and coding DOOM, and even Shigeru Miyamoto found inspiration from Pac-Man while designing the early Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong games. Pac-Man has reverberated throughout the history of videogames because it balances tension and release, and it also created a motion interface that was unlike anything which had preceded it.
There are oceans worth of digital ink which have examined, explained, and explicated Pac-Man but almost none of them that I’ve read have bothered to just ask the question that I don’t believe I’ve honestly been able to even begin to answer.
So I’ll ask again.
Why is Pac-Man so fun to play?
Why is Pac-Man so fun to move?
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
2.19.2024
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