Tōru Iwatani

Tōru Iwatani is a Japanese video game designer best known for creating Pac-Man, the arcade game released by Namco in 1980.

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Pac-Man: An arcade maze game in which a yellow character eats dots while avoiding ghosts. Iwatani created this game, which became his defining work.
Maze video game: A video game whose play centers on navigating paths through a maze. Pac-Man is a maze game whose movement and goals Iwatani shaped into a distinct arcade experience.
Puck Man: The original Japanese name of Namco’s 1980 arcade game later released internationally as Pac-Man. Iwatani’s game first appeared in Japan under this title.
Video game mascot: A recurring character used to represent a video game or game franchise. Pac-Man became an early, widely recognized character beyond the arcade cabinet.
Namco: A Japanese video game company founded in 1955 as Nakamura Seisakusho. Iwatani developed Pac-Man while working at this company.
Ghosts (Pac-Man): The four pursuers in Pac-Man, each with distinct movement behavior. Their pursuit turns Iwatani’s maze into a changing contest of risk and escape.
Video game arcade: A public venue containing coin-operated video games for play. Arcades were the commercial setting in which Iwatani designed Pac-Man for short, repeatable play.
Pac-Man fever: The widespread commercial and popular enthusiasm for Pac-Man during the early 1980s. The phenomenon captures the scale of the game’s cultural reach.
Shigeo Funaki: A Japanese video game designer who worked with Tōru Iwatani on Pac-Man. Funaki was part of the team that helped bring Iwatani’s design to life.
Power pellet: A large pellet in Pac-Man that temporarily lets Pac-Man eat the ghosts. This brief reversal gives the player a way to confront the pursuers rather than only flee.