Toru Iwatani

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Toru Iwatani

Tōru Iwatani (岩谷徹, Iwatani Tōru^?, born January 25, 1955) was a video game designer in the 1980s, and created one of the most popular arcade games of all time, Puck-man, better known by its American title 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 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, and still works there today overseeing the administration of the company. Since April 2005 he has been teaching the subject of Character Design Studies at the University of Arts in Osaka as visiting professor.

Iwatani plans to leave Namco by March 2007 to become a full-time lecturer at Tokyo Polytechnic University.^[1]