Pac-Man (character)

Pac-Man
Pac-Man character
Current appearance of Pac-Man, from Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures
First game	Pac-Man (1980)
Created by	Tōru Iwatani
Designed by	Tōru Iwatani
Voiced by (English)	Marty Ingels (1980s TV series) Martin Sherman (Pac-Man World 3) Debi Derryberry (Street Fighter X Tekken, Pac Man Party) Erin Mathews (Ghostly Adventures) Erica Mendez (Ghostly Adventures game and sequel)
Voiced by (Japanese)	Yuka Terasaki (Ghostly Adventures)

Pac-Man (Japanese: パックマン, Hepburn: Pakkuman^?) is the protagonist fictional character of the franchise of the same name by Namco, who was first introduced in the Japanese arcade game Pac-Man on May 22, 1980, in Japan, later released in the United States in October the same year. Ever since, the character has appeared in more than 30 officially licensed game spin-offs, as well as in numerous unauthorized clones and bootlegs, spawned a variety of Pac-Man merchandise with his image, as well as a television series. Pac-Man became a worldwide social phenomenon and Bandai Namco's mascot ever since he appeared in 1980.

Pac-Man's origins are debated. According to the character's creator Tōru Iwatani, the inspiration was pizza without a slice, which gave him a vision of "an animated pizza, racing through a maze and eating things with its absent-slice mouth". However, he admittedly said in a 1986 interview that the design of the character also came from simplifying and rounding out the Japanese character for a mouth, kuchi. The character's name comes from paku-paku (パクパク^?), an onomatopoeic Japanese word for gobbling something up. The character's name was originally written in English as "Puck-Man", but when Namco localized the game for the United States they changed it to "Pac-Man", fearing that vandals would change the P in Puck to an F.