Pac-Man Video Game Designer, Toru Iwatani, Retires at 52

According to a Reuters news report on Tuesday, Pac-Man designer Toru Iwatani will retire from Namco and spend more of his time teaching at the Tokyo Polytechnic Institute.

The report indicates that he created a final version of Pac-Man called "Pac Man Championship Edition," before retiring, and it will be available from Microsoft's "Xbox Live" service for about $10. It was created in two-dimensional graphics, like the original Pac-Man video game.

A preview of "Pac-Man Championship Edition" on gaming-age.com indicates that that it has the first new mazes which have been featured in the game for twenty-six years, and offers several modes, including one designed to be similar to the city of Manhattan, New York's streets, and another mode in which much of the maze is invisible, excluding areas entered by the player. The preview also states that it will become available for download on "Xbox LIVE Arcade" starting at five AM (eastern daylight time) on June 6th.

"Pac-Man" has been one of the most well-known video games for much of the last three decades. It has been released in versions for many different video game and computer systems, as well as stand-alone coin operated arcade game machines and handheld units.

Spin-offs have included "Ms. Pac-Man" and "Jr. Pac-Man." It was especially popular during the 1980s, when versions of "Pac-Man" were released for just about all of the Atari video game and computer systems, as well as the Nintendo Entertainment System and a few others.

Similar games included "Cosmic Cruncher" for the Commodore VIC-20 and "Munchman" for the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A computer. Namco software was also responsible for the well-known racing video game Pole Position, among others.

A profile of Toru Iwatani on wikipedia.org indicates that he was born in Tokyo and began working at Namco software in 1977. Iwatani, a programmer (Hideyuki Mokajima), and other Namco employees completed work on "Pac-Man" in 1980, and it was released to the Japanese public under the name "Puck-Man" during the same year. He also created a few other video games and has taught at the University of Arts in Osaka, according to the profile. An article on 1up.com from June, 2004 indicates that he has taught as a visiting professor at the university, in the field of Character Design Studies. The article states that this field involves the design and development of animation, comic, and video game characters.

Sources:

1. Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN0525717020070605

2. Gaming-Age, http://www.gaming-age.com/cgi-bin/previews/preview.pl?sys=xbox360&game=pacman_ce

3. Wikipedia.org, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toru_Iwatani

4. 1up.com, http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3128568