Something went wrong. Try again later
    Follow

    Tōru Iwatani

    Person » credited in 10 games

    Creator of the popular arcade games Pac-Man and Pole Position. The last game he developed before retiring was Pac-Man Championship Edition.

    Short summary describing this person.

    Tōru Iwatani last edited by SOUP_TO_GO on 01/04/21 11:48AM View full history

    Toru Iwatani is a former Japanese video game designer and creator of one of the most popular arcade games of all time, Pac-Man, as well as the most influential racing game, Pole Position. He was self-taught, without any formal training in computers, graphic design, or visual art.

    Pac-Man meets Mario
    Pac-Man meets Mario

    Iwatani was born in Tokyo, Japan. He joined the computer software company Namco in 1977, where he started his career in pinball machines. There, he came up with the idea for a game called "Puck-Man" and in 1980, and assembled a team to release the game within the same year. Puck-Man became a huge success and eventually Midway bought the United States rights for the game and released the game as "Pac-Man". The name change was from fear that kids would possibly deface the cabinet by replacing the "P'' with an "F".

    Iwatani went on to create a few other video games, including Libble Rabble, but none of them were as successful as Pac-Man. Namco promoted Toru Iwatani and became the overseer of the company's administration. He eventually left Namco to become a lecturer at Tokyo Polytechnic in 2007.

    sizepositionchange
    sizepositionchange
    positionchange
    positionchange
    positionchange
    bordersheaderpositiontable
    positionchange

    This edit will also create new pages on Giant Bomb for:

    Beware, you are proposing to add brand new pages to the wiki along with your edits. Make sure this is what you intended. This will likely increase the time it takes for your changes to go live.

    Comment and Save

    Until you earn 1000 points all your submissions need to be vetted by other Giant Bomb users. This process takes no more than a few hours and we'll send you an email once approved.