It’s strange to think that video game history was originally drawn on a piece of graph paper back in the 80s, but that’s exactly how Pac-Man started life.
Some 35 years ago, a developer at Japanese company Namco designed a little yellow blob that would turn into one of the most iconic video game characters of all time. A couple of days ago, Reddit user zadoc re-uploaded Toru Iwatani’s first designs for the spherical little chap drawn, pixel by pixel, on graph paper. The images are from a gaming convention in Holland a few years back, where Iwatani turned up with an inconspicuous blue binder and blew fans’ minds.
Alongside the designs for Pac-Man himself, Iwatani has also showed designs for the four ghost characters, Blinky, Inky, Pinky and Clyde, as well as his vision of what the levels would look like.
In case you were wondering, the red circle in the middle of each page reads ‘secret’ in Japanese – so don’t go telling anyone, ay?
Mark is the Gaming Editor for UNILAD. Having grown up a gaming addict, he’s been deeply entrenched in culture and spends time away from work playing as much as possible. Mark studied music at University and found a love for journalism through going to local gigs and writing about them for local and national publications.