Toru Iwatani Research Paper

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Toru Iwatani was born January 25, 1955 in Meguro ward of Tokyo, Japan. He is known to be the creator of the world famous and most popular arcade game called Pack Man. When he was 22, in 1977, he joined the NAMCO LIMITED company- a computer software company in Tokyo who produces video games. At the time their focus was on projection based amusement rides and light gun shooting galleries. He is also completely self taught without any training or schooling in computers, visual arts or graphic design. When Iwatani first started working at NAMCO he thought that he would be working on the pinball machines and was fairly satisfied about it. So when they had him work on something else he was very disappointed at first. They had him work on video games in 1978 instead but he compromised with working on a game that was a pinball-inspired paddle game-Gee Bee. Later he designed Bomb Bee and Cutie Q in 1979 by modifying Gee Bee. Iwatani wanted to create a game that would interest women though and be somewhat comedic. He believed that there was too much violence in the games now and solely guys were the ones going to the arcade to play them. Here is what Iwatani said on the matter during an interview with Programming for Work; "There were no games that everyone could enjoy, and especially none for women"(Toru Iwatani). He wanted a lighter atmosphere …show more content…

When two of the slices were gone he saw the shape of the Pan-Man but Iwatani says that that is only half true. "In Japanese", he says, "the character for mouth (kuchi) is a square shape. It's not circular like the pizza, but I rounded it out"(Toru Iwatani). He also said that the pizza, as well as listening to women talk, helped aid the idea that food would be the best way to interest women to play his game and into the arcade. He called the game Puckman-after the word paku paku in Japanese which describes the motion of opening and closing the

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