Toru Iwatani

Tōru Iwatani (Japanese岩 谷 彻, Tōru Iwatani, born January 25, 1955 in Meguro, Tokyo, Japan) was a video game developer in the 1980s and has created one of the most popular arcade games of all time, Pac -Man.

Life

Iwatani joined in 1977 a computer software company called Namco to where he began his career in the video game industry. There he came up with the idea for a game called Puck -Man and 1979 he completed, together with the programmer Hideyuki Mokajima and three other employees of Namco, the game. It was published on 10 October the same year in Japan, where it became a huge success. It attracted the arcade game manufacturer Bally / Midway Games attention to itself, which then the U.S. rights to the game and the release in the U.S. under the name Pac -Man secured, in the fear that children at Puck Man Arcade automata could change the 'P' in an 'F '. His success in North America and later around the world cemented his place in the history of video games.

Iwatani created a few more video games, including Libble Rabble, but none of them achieved the success of Pac -Man. He was promoted to Namco and works there today still as head of administration of the company.