Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani brought a rather incredible historical artifact to the recent NLGD Festival of Games in the Netherlands: a notebook full of sketches from the original design of Pac-Man. The thirty-year-old sketches show that Iwatani had a pretty good idea of how the mazes and Pac-Man sprite would work even in the pen-and-paper stage of the game design (although, note that the drafted maze lacks the warps at either side). You can also see how casual Iwatani is about carrying around a priceless, irreplaceable document. (See more pictures at Control.)
After the break, for comparison, you can see what's new with Pac-Man. At last week's E3 party, Namco Bandai debuted the pilot for a new 3D computer-animated cartoon starring a child Pac-Man and an army of evil ghosts. GameTrailers recorded the footage from one of the party's TVs, so you can see it now. It's a bit blurry-looking due to the 3D effect. It also totally lacks Marty Ingels.
Namco's world famous arcade game returns and now he's totally portable! Who can forget the countless hours and quarters spent avoiding the pesky ghosts while chompin' on the dots? Or gobbling up the fruit for bonus points! Re-live the arcade action on your mobile phone.
Guide PAC-MAN through the maze and munch all the dots and Power Pellets to clear each stage. Avoid the roaming enemy ghosts! Munch a Power Pellet to momentarily turn the ghosts blue! When they're blue you can eat them for bonus points! Gobble up the fruit for extra points and reach 10,000 points for an extra turn.
