What is "pac-man"

n. (context slang English) Anything that consumes indiscriminately.

is an arcade game developed by Namco and first released in Japan in May 1980. It was created by Japanese video game designer Toru Iwatani. It was licensed for distribution in the United States by Midway and released in October 1980. Immensely popular from its original release to the present day, Pac-Man is considered one of the classics of the medium, and an icon of 1980s popular culture. Upon its release, the game—and, subsequently, Pac-Man derivatives—became a social phenomenon that yielded high sales of merchandise and inspired a legacy in other media, such as the Pac-Man animated television series and the top-ten hit single "Pac-Man Fever". Pac-Man was popular in the 1980s and 1990s and is still played in the 2010s.

When Pac-Man was released, the most popular arcade video games were space shooters, in particular Space Invaders and Asteroids. The most visible minority were sports games that were mostly derivatives of Pong. Pac-Man succeeded by creating a new genre. Pac-Man is often credited with being a landmark in video game history, and is among the most famous arcade games of all time. It is also one of the highest-grossing video games of all time, having generated more than $2.5 billion in quarters by the 1990s.

The character has appeared in more than 30 officially licensed game spin-offs, as well as in numerous unauthorized clones and bootlegs. According to the Davie-Brown Index, Pac-Man has the highest brand awareness of any video game character among American consumers, recognized by 94 percent of them. Pac-Man is one of the longest running video game franchises from the golden age of video arcade games. It is part of the collection of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Pac-Man is a popular 1980 arcade game by Namco and the name of its title character.

Pac-Man may also refer to:

• Pac-Man (Atari 2600), a 1982 port of the arcade game for the Atari 2600
• Pac-Man (character), the titular protagonist of the franchise
• Pac-Man (series), the original game and its sequels and spinoffs
• Pac-Man (TV series), the short-lived cartoon series
• Pac-Man (album), the 1992 EP produced by Aphex Twin (Richard D. James) under the Power Pill alias, which sampled heavily from the game's audio
• "Pacman", an unreleased song by "Weird Al" Yankovic, and a parody of The Beatles' song "Taxman"
• Pacman, the Drosophila melanogaster orthologue of the exoribonuclease enzyme XRN1
• Pacman frog, the name given to several varieties of frog with large mouths and abdomens
• Pacman Nebula, a region of space formally known as NCG 281
• Lilac chaser, an optical phenomenon also known as the Pacman illusion
• Pac-Man defense, a legal strategy where a smaller company fights off a takeover by purchasing the larger company
• slang for a coin acceptor
• The codename of a covert propaganda operation undertaken by the South African military to discredit the anti-apartheid movement by the International Freedom Foundation
• Operation Pacman, a campaign enacted by the New Zealand Ministry of Fisheries in 2002 to apprehend illegal paua and rock lobster poachers
• Team Pacman, a wrestling team
• Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures, an animated television series
• 1-Pacman, a Philippine party-list group

Pac-Man (also known as Pac-Man: The Animated Series) is a 30-minute Saturday morning animated series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions based on the video game Pac-Man, made by Namco (now known as Bandai Namco Entertainment) and published by Bally-Midway, which premiered on ABC and ran for 44 episodes over two seasons from 1982 to 1983. It was also the first cartoon based on a video game.

Pac-Man is a 1992 EP by electronic music artist Richard D. James (Aphex Twin), released under the pseudonym of Power-Pill. The tracks on the album are remixes of the musical themes in the Pac-Man and New Rally-X arcade games.

Pac-Man is the protagonist fictional character of the franchise of the same name by Namco, who was first introduced in the Japanese arcade game Pac-Man on May 22, 1980 in Japan, later released in the United States in October the same year. Ever since, the character has appeared in more than 30 officially licensed game spin-offs, as well as in numerous unauthorized clones and bootlegs, spawned a variety of Pac-Man merchandise with his image, as well as a television series. Pac-Man became a worldwide social phenomenon and Namco's mascot.

In 1982, Atari Inc. released a port of Namco's hit arcade game Pac-Man for its Atari 2600 video game console. Like the original arcade version, the player controls the title character with a joystick. The object is to traverse a maze, consuming all the wafers within while avoiding four ghosts.

The game was programmed by Tod Frye, who was given a very limited time frame by Atari to complete the project. The technical differences between the Atari 2600 console and the original's arcade hardware—particularly the amount of available memory—presented several challenges to Frye. Given the popularity of the property, Atari produced approximately 12 million units (which was more than the estimated number of Atari 2600 consoles sold at the time), anticipating a high number of sales.

While the port is the best selling Atari 2600 game of all time, selling an estimated 7 million copies, and was the best-selling home video game of all time when it was released, critics focused on the gameplay and audio-visual differences from the arcade version. Initially, the port boosted the video game industry's presence in retail. It was followed by Atari 2600 ports of Pac-Mans arcade sequels.