The Japanese arcade video game Pac-Man (パックマン), designed by Tōru Iwatani, was released by Namco in 1980, at the height of the so-called golden age of video arcades. In the 1970s, Atari’s Pong and Taito’s Space Invaders (スペースインベーダー) had defined video games in the public consciousness, though Pac-Man would supersede them both to become arguably the most iconic video game in history.
Pac-Man’s initial appeal came from Iwatani’s creation of what Steven Poole (in his book Trigger Happy) calls “[t]he first videogame ‘character’ of all”. In their book Pac-Man: Birth of an Icon, Arjan Terpstra and Tim Lapetino argue that the game’s distinctive mascot is now a ubiquitous cultural symbol: “Pac-Man’s appeal as a character transcended arcades and moved into the wider realm of popular culture.”
Pac-Man: Birth of an Icon, published in 2021, is the definitive history of Pac-Man, covering every aspect of the game’s development and release. It’s both a coffee-table book with beautifully-reproduced illustrations (including numerous documents from the Namco archive) and a meticulously researched, comprehensive account of the game’s history.
Pac-Man’s initial appeal came from Iwatani’s creation of what Steven Poole (in his book Trigger Happy) calls “[t]he first videogame ‘character’ of all”. In their book Pac-Man: Birth of an Icon, Arjan Terpstra and Tim Lapetino argue that the game’s distinctive mascot is now a ubiquitous cultural symbol: “Pac-Man’s appeal as a character transcended arcades and moved into the wider realm of popular culture.”
Pac-Man: Birth of an Icon, published in 2021, is the definitive history of Pac-Man, covering every aspect of the game’s development and release. It’s both a coffee-table book with beautifully-reproduced illustrations (including numerous documents from the Namco archive) and a meticulously researched, comprehensive account of the game’s history.
One indication of the book’s attention to detail is that its title also appears in Japanese (パックマン:アイコンの誕生). Appendices include a complete Pac-Man gameography and the first English translation of Iwatani’s Japanese-language memoir, Pacman’s Method (パックマンのゲーム学入門).
Retro Gamer magazine (no. 61) also covered the making of Pac-Man (which it called “gaming’s most iconic videogame character”), but Pac-Man: Birth of an Icon is the first book on the history of the entire Pac-Man phenomenon. Leonard Herman’s Phoenix was the first general history of video games, and Tristan Donovan’s Replay is the most comprehensive guide to the subject. Push > Start was the first visual history of the medium.
Retro Gamer magazine (no. 61) also covered the making of Pac-Man (which it called “gaming’s most iconic videogame character”), but Pac-Man: Birth of an Icon is the first book on the history of the entire Pac-Man phenomenon. Leonard Herman’s Phoenix was the first general history of video games, and Tristan Donovan’s Replay is the most comprehensive guide to the subject. Push > Start was the first visual history of the medium.
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Cook and Becker: https://www.cookandbecker.com/en/article/233/the-official-pac-man-birth-of-an-icon-book.html
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