Pac-Man is a 1982 maze video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. for the Atari 2600 (originally known as the Atari Video Computer System) as a port of Namco’s 1980 arcade game of the same name. The player controls the title character, who attempts to eat all of the wafers in a maze while avoiding four ghosts that pursue him. Eating flashing wafers at the corners of the screen causes the ghosts to temporarily turn blue and flee, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for bonus points. Once eaten, a ghost is reduced to a pair of eyes, which return to the center of the maze to be restored.
Pac-Man was programmed by Tod Frye and took six months to complete. Expecting high sales, Atari produced more than a million copies of the highly anticipated game and held a “National Pac-Man Day” on April 3, 1982 to promote its release.
Pac-Man remains the best-selling Atari 2600 game of all time, selling over 8 million copies, and was the all-time best-selling video game for several years. Despite its commercial success, the game was panned by critics for its poor graphics and sound, as well as for bearing little resemblance to the original arcade game. Since its release, it has been considered one of the worst video games ever made and one of the worst arcade ports released on the system.
