Microsoft releases new version of Pac Man. The video game is available for download Xbox Live and costs $10.
Pac Man is a 27 year old beloved video game. The game has mazes with changing shapes and a yellow 'hero' 'eating' white pellets, racing colored ghosts. The game is accompanied with rhythmic dance music. The game also has a 'Dark mode', where mazes are hidden.
Nowadays game developing companies spend lots of money on games. The amount of the money spent on games can even be a rival of the money spent on major movies. But new Pac Man is designed in the traditional two-dimension manner. It's faithful to its older version.
"Pac Man Championship Edition" is the second and the last version of the game. It was specially designed for Xbox 360 Pac-Man World Championship in New York, and nine finalists of the championship played the game for the first time.
Toru Iwatani, 52 year old, is an employee of Japan's Namco Bandai Holdings and the designer of Pac Man. He is going to retire this year and the new version of the video game is his last work with Namco. Iwatani will work with students at Tokyo Polytechnic University, the next generation game designers.
Iwatani is thinking that the most of the money in game designing will be spent on outsiders. Other industry specialists can bring some new ideas to the game sphere. He even brought the example of well known game Tetris, which was designed by a Russian scientist Alexey Pajitnov in 1985.
"For someone thinking outside of the industry, they can have a fresh new idea," Iwatani said.
Iwatani doesn't yet have plan for newer versions of the video game, but he said, maybe he'll develop it with students, or maybe he'll work with Namco in a supervisory position. By Ruzan Harutyunyan for HULIQ
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