Under license from Namco, the game’s Japanese originators, Midway Manufacturing introduces the obsession that is Pac-Man to American arcades. Titled Puck-Man in its homeland (due to the yellow character’s resemblance to a round hockey puck), Midway swaps vowels for fear that vandals will turn the letter P into an F on the arcade cabinets. With its cute characters and instinctive game play, Pac-Man catches on immediately, propelling the video game industry into overdrive. 
A musical ode to video gaming starts climbing the charts as Buckner & Garcia issue their single Pac-Man Fever (a full album, filled out with other video game tribute songs, will follow in 1982). Shortly before the album’s release, the “Pac-Man Fever” single peaks in the Billboard Hot 100 at #9, having sold over a million copies.
General Computer Corp., a small company making “grey market” modification kits to freshen up Pac-Man and Missile Command arcade games, cuts a deal with Midway, the American licensee for Pac-Man, handing over the code to its Pac-Man modification kit Crazy Otto. Midway contracts GCC to continue work on the kit, but now under license. The first thing to go are the kit’s name and its modified Pac-Man character, who now has legs. A few changes and a few months later, the game’s central character has no legs, but will now sport lipstick and a pink bow, as Midway prepares to officially release the new game as an authorized Pac-Man sequel, Ms. Pac-Man – amazingly good luck for a small business that could just as easily have been sued into oblivion.
Midway releases the arcade video game Kick, a whimsical game which is later updated to include a “guest starring” appearance by Pac-Man (to which Midway also holds the North American license).
Midway delivers the long-anticipated sequel to Pac-Man to eager arcade operators. Ms. Pac-Man – a game which originated not from Pac-Man’s creators in Japan, but from an American “enhancement kit” maker called General Computer Corporation – arrives in arcades and immediately starts to break earnings records, eventually becoming the top-earning coin-op video game in American history.
CBS unleashes a particularly virulent strain of Pac-Man Fever into record stores, courtesy of rock group Buckner & Garcia, and there is no cure in sight. With musical odes to the arcade games Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Defender, Frogger, Asteroids, Berzerk, Centipede, and even the relatively obscure coin-op Mouse Trap, this album’s release probably marks the high point of the video game industry “boom” – the apex at which public awareness of video games is at the saturation point, having seeped into the rest of pop culture.
In a federal court hearing in Chicago, Atari and Midway – as the American licensees of Pac-Man – are victorious over Magnavox, whose Odyssey² cartridge K.C. Munchkin was alleged to infringe on Pac-Man. The court ruling, which results in an injunction forcing Magnavox to pull K.C. Munchkin off the market, says it “captures the ‘total concept and feel’ of, and is substantially similar to, Pac-Man,” and that Magnavox “jeopardized the substantial investments of Midway and especially Atari.” Beaten but defiant, Magnavox releases a K.C. Munchkin sequel later in the year.
After an extremely short development period and industry insider warnings that the finished product wasn’t ready for prime time, Atari releases Tod Frye’s home version of Pac-Man for the Atari VCS, selling record numbers… and, within weeks, becomes the subject of bad word-of-mouth and critical slams on its weak game play and graphics. At the urging of Atari CEO Ray Kassar, Pac-Man‘s print run exceeds the number of VCS consoles sold to date, since it’s anticipated that the Pac-crazed public will buy the console simply because Pac-Man is available for it.
Buckner & Garcia’s hit single Pac-Man Fever reaches its peak on the Billboard Hot 100, reaching #9 on the chart. Over a million copies of the single (backed with an instrumental version of the same song) have sold.
Midway releases the arcade video game Super Pac-Man, licensed from Namco, the Japanese developers behind Pac-Man, of which this game is a direct sequel.
Still trying to stem the tide of bootleg copies of Pac-Man in American arcades, Midway releases the coin-op conversion kit Pac-Man Plus, offering arcade operators an inexpensive (and legal) way to “freshen” old Pac-Man machines on-site rather than turning to bootleg enhancement kits, a problem that has been stealing Midway’s market share since Pac-Man became a hit.
Warner Communications, the parent company of video game manufacturer Atari, issues an earnings statement in which it anticipates losing money in the fourth quarter of 1982. The losses are attributed to product returns and other shortfalls experienced by Atari, despite the acquisition of licenses for home video games based on Pac-Man and E.T. The reaction on Wall Street is immediate, and a massive sell-off of video game related stock leaves the entire industry reeling within a week. The industry is seeing the first hint of the bust that will end the boom years.
Midway releases the arcade video trivia game Professor Pac-Man, a quiz game tenuously connected to the company’s string of Pac-Man sequels. Few cabinets are produced due to very low early sales, so Professor Pac-Man is a rare find.
Atarisoft, an Atari imprint that ports the company’s games (or licensed properties) to competitors’ hardware, reveals its port of Pac-Man for the Intellivision at the 1983 summer Consumer Electronics Show. The game proves to be a minor hit closer to Christmas.
Midway releases the arcade video game Pac ‘N’ Pal, licensed from Namco, the Japanese developers behind Pac-Man, of which this game is a loose sequel.
Atari, under its Atarisoft imprint, releases the Apple II port of Pac-Man, largely reusing the code of the earlier H.A.L. Labs title Taxman.
Midway releases the arcade video game Jr. Pac-Man, a new Pac-Man sequel which introduces a scrolling element with mazes that are bigger than the screen.
Scitron Digital releases the album Namco Video Game Music, collecting recordings of music and sounds from the company’s classic arcade games.
Midway releases the arcade video game Pac-Land, a game placing Pac-Man in a side-scrolling 2-D world similar to that of Super Mario Bros.
Atari Games releases the arcade video game Pac-Mania, licensed from Namco, the Japanese developers behind Pac-Man, of which this game is an isometric 3-D remake.
Namco releases the arcade compilation Namco Museum Volume 2 for the Sony Playstation, including the ’80s arcade hits Gaplus, Mappy, and Xevious. (This is the Japanese release; the same title will be released in North America later in the year, with a slightly different lineup of games.)
Namco releases the arcade compilation Namco Museum Volume 1 for the Sony Playstation, including the ’80s arcade hits Pac-Man, Galaga, Pole Position, and Bosconian. (The same title was released to the Japanese market in 1995.)
Namco releases the arcade compilation Namco Museum Volume 2 for the Sony Playstation, including the ’80s arcade hits Super Pac-Man, Gaplus, Mappy, and Xevious. (The same title was released to the Japanese market earlier in the year, with a slightly different lineup of games.)
Namco releases the arcade compilation Namco Museum Volume 3 for the Sony Playstation, including the ’80s arcade hits Ms. Pac-Man, Galaxian, Dig Dug, and Pole Position II. (The same title was released to the Japanese market the previous year, with the same lineup of games.)
Namco releases the arcade compilation Namco Museum Volume 4 for the Sony Playstation, including the ’80s arcade games Pac-Land, Ordyne, and others. (The same title was released to the Japanese market the previous year, with the same lineup of games.)
Namco releases the arcade compilation Namco Museum Volume 5 for the Sony Playstation, including the ’80s arcade games Pac-Mania, Baraduke, and others. (The same title was released to the Japanese market earlier in the year, with the same lineup of games.)
The enigmatically titled internet short film Project Yellow Sphere debuts, revealed to be a semi-serious, six-minute live-action-plus-CGI proof-of-concept trailer for a potential Pac-Man movie. Shot and produced entirely at commercial production house Steelehouse Productions in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it’s the closest anyone has gotten to mounting a long-talked about Pac-Man film. 
Masaya Nakamura, the founder of pioneering Japanese video game maker Namco, dies at the age of 91. Founded in 1955 as Nakamura Manufacturing Co., Namco was an early proponent of video game development in Japan, though it saw its earliest successes as the Japanese distributor of Atari arcade games imported from the U.S. After moderately successful early coin-ops such as Gee Bee, Namco quickly established itself as a global powerhouse with the release of such perennial classics as Pac-Man, Galaxian, Galaga, Dig Dug, Pole Position, and Xevious, among many others. Namco’s growth in the 1980s was so explosive that it absorbed Japanese film studio Nikkatsu in 1993 (several of whose titles Nakamura oversaw as executive producer), and later merged with Bandai in 2005.