{"id":231045,"date":"2023-05-21T06:03:25","date_gmt":"2023-05-21T10:03:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sftarticles.wpenginepowered.com\/es\/?p=290226"},"modified":"2025-07-01T19:08:54","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T02:08:54","slug":"the-checkered-history-of-ms-pac-man-the-first-great-female-icon-of-videogames","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/the-checkered-history-of-ms-pac-man-the-first-great-female-icon-of-videogames\/","title":{"rendered":"The checkered story of Ms. Pac-man, the first great female video game icon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As much as we now argue between open worlds full of secrets with our favoritism for ‘GTA<\/a><\/strong>‘ or ‘Zelda<\/a><\/strong>‘, talk about FPS and indie games as if two hundred new titles are released every week, we must remember that forty years ago the world of video games belonged to a yellow ball eating pills<\/strong> and being chased by ghosts: ‘Pac-man’ was a bomb since its release, on May 22, 1980 that came to unseat ‘Space Invaders’ in the world of arcades. Logically a sequel had to come soon, didn’t it? Well, it wasn’t that easy.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Waka waka waka waka<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A book could be written with all the shameless plagiarism of the classic Pac-Man (‘Lock’n’chase’, ‘Piranha’, ‘Gobble a ghost’ or ‘Jelly monsters’, among hundreds of others). In fact, it is one of the first cases in which the intellectual property <\/strong>of video games<\/a><\/strong> went to trial<\/strong>, with Namco winning several of them. In this scenario in which there was no month without a ‘Pac-man’ substitute, it is easier to understand all the trouble the developer went through to get a sequel that didn’t taste, simply, like another cheap copy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paradoxically, the story of ‘Ms. Pac-man’ begins with a plagiarism by Namco. Pac-man<\/strong>‘ begins with a plagiarism by Namco, but not of Pac-Man, but of ‘Missile Command’, a game that six MIT students (through their company, General Computer Corp, or GCC) were able to improve by reverse engineering: ‘Super Missile Attack’ was a success\u2026 until Atari sued them for 15 million dollars.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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