The pizza story is only half true. This episode explores how 24-year-old Namco designer Toru Iwatani shaped Pac-Man from the Japanese kanji for mouth and the onomatopoeia paku-paku, and why he deliberately rejected the smoke-filled, male-dominated, Space Invaders-era arcade of 1979 to build a colorful, nonviolent game that would draw in women and couples. We cover the unusually long one-year-and-five-month development with a nine-person team, the Popeye-inspired power pellet, the slot-machine fruit bonuses, and the new RGB display technology that replaced cellophane taped to monochrome monitors.

We also dig into Iwatani's fight with Namco president Masaya Nakamura, who wanted all four ghosts colored red, and the deterministic AI that gives Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde distinct chase, ambush, flank, and retreat behaviors. Then comes the ro ...