Word of the Day, Day Two

Today's word of the day was inspired by the movie "Scott Pilgrim VS. The World." I don't want to spoil the movie if you haven't seen it before, but I actually really recommend it, especially if you like old school video games :) The movie is chock full of crazy 8-bit music and graphics, obscure classic game references, and neon hair color.
Anyway, there's a scene in the movie where Scott meets the girl of his dreams, Ramona Flowers, at a party. Wishing to impress her with his vast knowledge, he tells her the history of the naming of the game of Pac Man. She is unimpressed, but I was pretty interested in the facts he had to share. So I decided to do a little research of my own. (Have I mentioned research is like, one of my favorite things ever?)

Word #2 - PAC MAN.
It turns out the game was made in hopes of attracting females to the dirty, smelly man caves arcade centers were at the time. "so it would become cleaner and brighter." says the creator of Pac Man,  Toru Iwatani.

You may have heard the story about how a pizza with a missing slice inspired Pac-Man's design. But it turns out the game was designed entirely around food. "I thought about something that may attract girls," says Iwatani. "Maybe boy stories or something to do with fashion. However, girls love to eat desserts. My wife often does! So the verb 'eat' gave me a hint to create this game."

That theme continued with the game's name. In Japanese, "puck puck" is akin to the U.S. saying "munch munch". So the original name - Puck-Man - translated as "Munch man". (A savvy Midway Games official changed it to Pac-Man when the game hit the U.S. to discourage vandals from shaving off part of the "P," thereby creating an obscene word.)

- Yahoo! Games

Ha! I don't know about you but I feel more knowledgeable already. Here are some more Pac Man facts for you.

• The ghosts that chase Pac Man are named Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde.
• In 2005, Guinness World Records named "Pac-Man" the most successful coin-operated game.
• Hanna-Barbera produced a Saturday morning "Pac-Man" cartoon on ABC from 1982-84.
• Just this year, Guinness named Pac-Man himself as the most recognizable video game character of all-time with 94 percent consumer recognition.
• "When you play the game, it might seem as if the four ghosts are actively chasing you. That's not exactly true. Iwatani intentionally avoided programming them with that purpose, since that would have resulted in Pac-Man zipping around the screen with four ghosts always right behind him."

The last bullet point brings me to a funny story. When my uncle Kurt was younger, like in the early 80's, his favorite hangout spot was the local arcade.  He has one of those minds that video games just make perfect sense to, like my younger brother Ben. He had the high score in all of the games at the arcade, he was like a local legend. When my aunt tried to tell people that her brother was the infamous "ACE" (ahahha, remember when we all had to come up with three letter acronyms for our usernames?) no one would believe her. Anyway, Pac Man was one of his favorite games and he actually says he memorized the paths of the ghost and could beat the game almost every time. Ahh the good old days of simple video games.

Join us tomorrow for more fun with words!