Leading interactive entertainment company BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Inc. today celebrates PAC-MAN’s 40th birthday with upcoming activities and partnerships to commemorate this momentous milestone with fans around the world. The video game and pop culture icon steps into his 40s more relevant than ever as he stars in a bevy of new video game offerings, product partnerships, and brand collaborations.
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“PAC-MAN was truly the first breakout superstar of our industry and his enduring staying power says a lot about the experiences he’s given to fans and the love they’ve given him in return.”
Born on May 22, 1980, PAC-MAN immediately rose to meteoric popularity, first in video game arcades, then on the pop culture stage with hit song “PAC-MAN Fever” and through an array of branding and entertainment appearances throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s. With a brand recognition rate of 90% around the world, PAC-MAN’s image and brand continues to be one of the most recognized on the planet.
While PAC-MAN has transcended into the world of entertainment, his heart still resides in video games. As part of his 40th birthday celebrations, PAC-MAN will be making a special appearance in a Minecraft® DLC enabling players to enjoy PAC-MAN mazes within the game starting today. In addition to Minecraft, no 40th anniversary celebration would be complete without new PAC-MAN video game offerings from BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment starting with PAC-MAN LIVE STUDIO coming to the Twitch game platform, in partnership with Amazon Games, which will enable four players to compete in one maze in an all-out chomp-fest to see who will eat the most pellets and survive the stage. Players will also be able to create their own PAC-MAN mazes and share them with friends online or play the classic PAC-MAN game if they so choose. For classic arcade experience connoisseurs, a special Tastemakers 40th Anniversary Arcade 1UP machine is available now at Arcade1Up.com for $399, with 40th Anniversary Counter-cade, Party Cade, and Head-to-Head models coming this summer. Lastly, additional new PAC-MAN games are on the way for the latter part of 2020.
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On the product partnership, brand collaboration, and technology fronts, PAC-MAN is not slowing down one bit as he started the year by being featured on BANDAI America’s newest Tamagotchi toy. PAC-MAN also returns in PAC-MAN and the Ghostly Snack Attack, the next chapter of his PAC-MAN™ Stories™ series on Amazon’s Alexa platform – available this summer. Never one to shy away from the camera, PAC-MAN will share his personal story in a 40th Anniversary Book, edited by Cook & Becker, which will take a retrospective look at his creation and life leading up to his 40th birthday. PAC-MAN is also the subject of advanced AI research being conducted by NVIDIA. Trained on 50,000 episodes of the game, a powerful new AI model created by NVIDIA Research , called GameGAN, can generate a fully functional version of PAC-MAN — without an underlying game engine. This means that even without understanding a game’s fundamental rules, AI can recreate the game with convincing results.
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