Pac Man (1980)
As a game, Pac-Man is an incredibly well-designed masterpiece, iconic and influential to video games in countless ways. At it's core, Pac-Man is an incredibly simple and accessible to people of all ages; it's controlled only with the joystick and before you even start controlling Pac-Man he's already eating dots and teaching the player how to play. The ghosts are obviously the bad guys, and the only remaining element on the screen, the giant Pac-Dots, can be experimented with with little risk on the first level. The game teaches the player and within seconds, anyone can pick up and play the game due to this simplicity.
Designed to be simple.
Now, the dangers of making a game simple is that it risks becoming monotonous and boring after a couple of levels. The layout of the board never actually changes, so the only real variety that comes with each level is the fruits that show up for bonus points. The game SHOULD get boring, but the solves this by speeding up, causing Pac-Man to devolve into a mad frenzy of binge eating and fear of the bright coloured undead. There's no time for the game to get boring because you either keep playing or die. The panic works better here than in games like Space Invaders because Pac-Man can move freely around his labyrinth, causing the player to feel trapped in a game of cat and mouse that taps into the primal human need to survive. The game is catered to the human experience, and it just works.
Just not this game of Cat and Mouse
Since Pac-Man was created in 1980, its graphics don't match the high quality, full rendered masterpieces of games like Detroit: Become Human, but honestly I think this works better for the simplicity of the game. The bright colours make all of the important elements clear; the player knows where Pac-Man is, and can easily identify all of the hell spawns that are coming for his mortal soul. Because of this, the player can last longer in the game and have a faster reaction time. Nothing about the game design or the controls inhibit the player in any way, and I think any clearer or more realistic graphics would just complicate and muddle the game. Pac-Man is a yellow disk that occasionally has a mouth, and the less I need to think about the real world implications of his character design, the better. Is he made of skin? Does he have organs? I don't need to (or want to) know. The game's cartoony graphics also help give it a larger appeal, and I honestly think that even smoothing out Pac-Man and the ghosts to be more circular would cheapen the game's aesthetic. It works exactly how it is, and nothing should be changed.
While I do think that Pac-Man is a perfect game (minus the lack of an actual ending), and I think that Pac-Man the character works perfectly in this game and should be solidified as one of the icons of gaming. HOWEVER, Pac-Man only works in his own original game, and any attempts to modernize him or use him in more versatile scenarios are sinful and should be abolished. The actual "character design" version of Pac-Man just makes me uncomfortable, with the extraneous limbs and the nose and everything, and it seems like a cash grab to use him to in this form. He doesn't need to be a fleshed out or mascot-character like Mario, and he literally does not have the adaptability that other video game icons have. He needs to stick in his lane.
This is shameful.
Overall, the game of Pac-Man its simple, brilliant, and everything within it works perfectly to enhance the player experience. Pac-Man and his ghosts complement the gameplay flawlessly, but are unacceptable anywhere outside of their native element (with a potential exception of Smash, but even then it's iffy). Pac-Man (and not Ms Pac-Man) is one of the shining examples of a character who is almost purely utilitarian, a one-trick pony, but still an incredibly identifiable icon. Well done, Namco.
But Shel Silverstein still did it first.
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