Toru Iwatani famously conceived the iconic shape of Pac-Man in 1979 while staring at a pizza with a single slice removed during his lunch break.

A closer look

Toru Iwatani famously conceived the iconic shape of Pac-Man in 1979 while staring at a pizza with a single slice removed during his lunch break. He wanted to design a game that would appeal to women and couples rather than just boys shooting aliens, so he focused the entire gameplay loop around the universal concept of eating. Originally titled Puck Man in Japan, executives quickly realized that American arcade hooligans would inevitably vandalize the P into an F, so they changed the name to avoid a nationwide epidemic of accidentally profane arcade cabinets. It is incredibly comforting to know that one of the most recognizable cultural icons of the twentieth century was born simply because a game designer was hungry and assumed everyone else would heavily relate to a yellow circle endlessly consuming junk