Toru Iwatani

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Tōru Iwatani (岩谷徹, Iwatani Tōru^?, born January 25, 1955) is a former Japanese video game designer and created one of the most popular arcade games of all time, Pac-Man.

Iwatani was born in the Meguro ward of Tokyo, Japan. He joined the computer software company Namco in 1977, where he started his career in the video game business. There, he came up with the idea for a game called "Puck-Man" and in 1980, he, along with programmer Hideyuki Mokajima and three other Namco employees, finished the game. It was released to the Japanese public on May 10 of that year, where it became a huge success. It caught the attention of arcade-game manufacturer Midway, who bought the United States rights for the game and released the game in the U.S. as "Pac-Man", for fear that kids may deface a Puck-Man cabinet by changing the 'P' to an 'F'. Due to its innovative concept and continuing international popularity, it is regarded as one of the all-time classic video games. Iwatani returned to his Pac-Man roots in 2007 when he developed Pac-Man Championship Edition for the Xbox 360, which he states is the final game he will develop.^[1]

Iwatani went on to create a few other video games, including Libble Rabble, but none of them reached the amount of success that Pac-Man did. He was promoted within the ranks of Namco, eventually being responsible for overseeing the administration of the company. In a VH-1 Game Break interview, Iwatani said he did not personally profit from the creation of Pac-Man, saying, "The truth of the matter is, there were no rewards per se for the success of Pac-Man. I was just an employee. There was no change in my salary, no bonus, no official citation of any kind."^[2] Since April 2005 he has been teaching the subject of Character Design Studies at the University of Arts in Osaka as visiting professor. Iwatani left Namco in March 2007 to become a full-time lecturer at Tokyo Polytechnic University.^[3]