THIS MONTH ON EDGE
When we weren’t doing everything else, we were thinking about stuff like this
BOOK
Pac-Man: Birth Of An Icon
bit.ly/pacmanicon
Arjan Terpstra and Tim Lapetino deliver a comprehensive and colourful history of Namco’s mascot in Cook & Becker’s latest lavish coffee-table tome. Bolstered by interviews with key figures, Birth Of An Icon offers rich insights into the arcade classic’s conception, development, design, marketing and legacy, alongside a wealth of fascinating images. These include vintage photos, flyers, posters and more: a particular highlight is a “distribution of errors” document (effectively an old-fashioned heat map) with a graph-paper maze marked with crosses showing where players were most likely to die. It’s crowned by the first-ever translation of Toru Iwatani’s book Pac-Man’s Game Study Manual, offering reflections on his career at Namco and the design of his seminal creation.