Did Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man have a sham marriage? (2024)

The story of Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man is familiar to anyone who’s played the game. Featured in Ms. Pac-Man, the narrative appeared in three intermissions between the pill-chomping action. In the firstact, the two Pacs meet while evading ghosts together. In the second, Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man chase each other in a frenzied Pac-courtship. And in the third act, a stork brings a Pac-Baby for them to raise. It’s heartwarming, in a Pac-way.

But is their marriage a real one, or just a corporate fiction?

Both in the game and in the business world, Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man had a marriage born out of profit rather than love.

Pac-Man can’t get his story straight

According to the game, Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man met while being chased by ghosts. The sequence is clear. But Pac-Man slipped up in a rare 1981 interview withAtari Age.

During the Pac-interview, Pac-Man answered an array of questions about his life and future. But he was perhaps too candid when asked about Ms. Pac-Man.

Atari Age: Pac-Man, we don’t want to pry into your personal life, but we understand you have a new girlfriend.

Pac-Man: Isn’t it amazing how these rumors start? Let’s set the record straight once and for all. There is a new arcade game with a lady Pac-Man and they tell me she’s real cute—long eye-lashes, a bow in her hair, and curves in all the right places. But I’ve hardly met the lady! I’ve been busy lately—you know, personal appearances on National Pac-Man Day, working on my night club act…

Pac-Man painted a clear picture of the relationship: it was arranged through a couple of corporate meetings by a Pac-Man more concerned with his career than with love.

Ms. Pac-Man was just part of the lie.

Outside of Pac-land, a couple of hackers push a game calledCrazy Otto into the picture

It makes sense that the game relationship was shaky, because Ms. Pac-Man wasn’t born and raised in the Pac-family. Instead, she was built by some hackers.

They were part of the General Computer Corporation (GCC), a group of MIT dropouts and fresh grads who hacked arcade games (this presentation goes deeper into their story, and this one has a few blurry pictures of their early set-up).

Their specialty was making add-on kits to speed up games that had gotten too easy. Once arcade gamers got tired of a game, they usually moved on, but owners could squeeze out a few more quarters by making the games harder. It was a profitable business, but there were also risks. When GCC turnedMissile CommandintoSuper Missile Attack, the add-on attracted a law-suit from Atari, but the team of kids prevailed.

At the same time, they were already taking onPac-Man. Their speed-up kit would reinvigorate interest in Pac-Man and make them a lot of money.They wanted to make the game harder and better, so they came up withCrazy Otto, a game that had more levels, better gameplay, and slightly different character shapes to mix it up. Crazy Otto himself was a Pac-Man with legs, and the ghosts grewtiny antennae.

ButCrazy Ottowasn’t destined to be merely an add-on. Instead, a company called Midway was interested in testingCrazy Otto out in fresh game machines.

The hackers make a deal

Kevin Curran and Doug Macrae, two GCC founders, called up Midway to see what they thought of the deal. Midway owned North American distribution rights toPac-Man, so they decided to test out theCrazy Otto concept. It was a hit. Instead of sticking with Crazy Otto, they built a new brand.

Super-Pac was the first name they used, but Midway knew that more women were playingPac-Man than any other arcade game. They made it a female character, firstMiss Pac-Man and then Pac-Woman, but neither name stuck. Mrs. Pac-Man was briefly considered, but Midway decided it was politically incorrect. Ms. Pac-Man was finally born from Crazy Otto.

Midway went ahead without waiting for parent company Namco. They used their distribution rights and charged ahead, paying royalties to Namco and General Computer (according to developer Doug Macrae, Namco eventually approved of the game and even recommended Ms. Pac-Man wear a bow instead of the original red hair). The game was still an add-on—every machine slapped an additional board onto the originalPac-Manarchitecture.

The improvisational nature of the game didn’t hurt its sales. In 1982, they sold 110,000 arcade machinesand it became the most popular arcade video game of all time.

A rush to Pac-Marriage

Midway, Namco, and GCCnever resolved the obvious confusion about Ms. Pac-Man’s relationship to Pac-Man. Were they related, since they started with the same last name? Did she become Mrs. Pac-Man? That was irrelevant in the speedy march to marriage.

Crazy Otto didn’t exist in Pac-land—there was only Ms. Pac-Man, a sultry femme fatale.

Pac-Man had revealed in his interview withAtari Age that he and Ms. Pac-Man had briefly met, but in the game they acted out the script (it’s no coincidence that each scene is presented as an “Act” in a play). Just as the awkward marriage between GCC, Midway, and Namco made it work for the sake of sales, Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man did what they had to do to keep the machine going.

The Pac-Marriage produces Pac-Offspring. But at what price?

From the outside, the Pac-Marriage seemed happy. Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man settled into domestic life with their Pac-Baby. Butfor a family whose life had been arranged by a corporation and was constantly being chased by ghosts, things had to be difficult.

Still, they developed a life with Baby Pac-Man, who grew into the strapping youngJunior Pac-Man. Pac-Man briefly took a Professorship, and through the animated series, we even know that Ms. Pac-Man’s first name was Pepper. They had a dog named Chomp-Chomp and a cat called Sour Puss.

But there are troubling signs beneath the happy domestic surface. After all, the couple didn’t conceive their child—as depicted in Act III, it was dropped off by a stork. Eventually, Junior even fell in love with one of the ghosts that terrorized his family. Was he even their child or, as Pac-Man admitted in that firstAtari Ageinterview, was it just a corporate fiction?

From the beginning, the Pac-Family was there to make money, not a life together.

The awkward marriage between companies eventually ends

When GCC, Midway, and Namco first entered into their unusual arrangement, it was inevitable that it would break down. Though GCC madeJr. Pac-Man,many Atari games, and was instrumental in developing Atari systems, in 1984 they switched to making Macintosh peripherals and printers.

There was also what Doug Macrae called amaternity suit, in which GCC battled for Pac-money from merchandising and cabinets related to Junior Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man. In the meantime, Atari collapsed. The business changed quickly, and only tight bonds stuck.

Of course, Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, and even Baby Pac-Man lived on well beyond the awkward marriage, both in the real world and in Pac-land. Even though Ms. Pac-Man started as a hack, she endured.

Was her marriage to Pac-Man a sham? Was GCC’s marriage to Midway and Namco a smooth working relationship, or were they destined to break up from the beginning? All we can do is look back at the moments that seemed happy and hope, somehow, there was a bit of truth beneath the act.