May 2003

This month's unlikely chara is the one and only Pac-Man! Arguably one of the first real "characters" to feature in the game industry.

History: Pac Man's character is difficult to explain even to the Japanese -- he is an innocent character. He hasn't been educated to discern between good and evil. He acts more like a small child than a grown-up person. Think of him as a child learning in the course of his daily activities. If some one tells him guns are evil, he would be the type to rush out and eat guns. But he would most probably eat any gun, even the pistols of policemen who need them.

Pac-Man was first released in arcade form by Midway in 1980. There are two main versions: an upright and a cocktail table model. Two variations of the upright were made; the primary difference other than size was that one (the standard arcade model) had art on the sides and below the coin slots, and on the other (the Mini-Myte model) these areas had a woodgrain pattern.

Having such a retro gaming chara sure brought back some fond memories and I'm it's cool to see what people can do with a "yellow dot with eyes and a mouth"!

Artist of the month: Glarryg! For giving us a giggle with his "The Scream" inspired pic!