Section 1: Introduction
Pac-Man is a maze arcade game released by Namco in 1980. The player guides Pac-Man through a maze eating every dot while avoiding four ghosts. Eating a power pellet briefly reverses the situation, letting Pac-Man eat the ghosts instead.
It is published by Bandai Namco and has no governing body; competitive play is organised by individual events and record-keeping bodies rather than a federation.
Section 2: Platform & Setup
- Original platform: upright arcade cabinet with a four-way joystick and no buttons.
- Maze: a single fixed layout containing 240 dots and 4 power pellets.
- Ghosts: Blinky (red), Pinky (pink), Inky (cyan) and Clyde (orange), each with distinct pursuit behaviour.
- Warp tunnel: a side passage connecting left and right edges; ghosts move more slowly through it.
- The player starts with a set number of lives and earns an extra one at a score threshold.
Section 3: Objective
Clear the maze by eating every dot and power pellet. Doing so advances to the next level, which uses the same maze at higher difficulty. Contact with a ghost, unless it is frightened, costs a life.
Section 4: Gameplay & Modes
The Ghosts
The four ghosts are not random. Each uses a distinct targeting rule, which is why the game is learnable rather than luck-based:
- Blinky pursues Pac-Man directly, and speeds up as dots are eaten.
- Pinky targets ahead of Pac-Man rather than at him.
- Inky uses both Pac-Man's position and Blinky's, making him the least predictable.
- Clyde chases when far away and retreats when close.
Scatter and Chase
Ghosts alternate between chase and scatter phases on a timer, retreating to their home corners during scatter. Learning these cycles is the foundation of pattern play.
Power Pellets
- Eating one turns the ghosts blue and vulnerable for a limited time.
- Ghosts reverse direction the moment a pellet is eaten.
- An eaten ghost returns to the centre as eyes and regenerates.
- The vulnerable period shortens as levels progress, and eventually stops working altogether.
Fruit
Bonus items appear beneath the ghost house at intervals, worth increasing points by level.
Section 5: Scoring & Winning
- Dot: 10 points · Power pellet: 50 points
- Ghosts eaten during one power pellet: 200, 400, 800, 1600 — eating all four is worth 3,000
- Fruit: from 100 points (cherry) upward by level
There is no win condition in the usual sense. The original arcade game has a level 256 "kill screen", where an integer overflow corrupts half the maze and makes it impossible to complete — which is the de facto end of the game and the basis of the perfect-score record.
Section 6: Competitive Rules
No federation governs Pac-Man. Competition is defined by record-keeping conventions:
- Which build: original arcade ROM versus later ports, which differ in ghost behaviour and timing.
- Perfect score: the recognised maximum on the original arcade game, achieved by eating every available point through level 256.
- Pattern play: because ghost behaviour is deterministic, memorised routes are a legitimate technique rather than an exploit.
- Verification: record attempts are validated by third-party scoreboards, not by the publisher.