# Pac\-Man Cabinet

The 1980 Pac\-Man upright arcade cabinet: its art, its sideways monitor and four\-way joystick, how each ghost hunts, and a playable game on its screen

By Numa

Topic: Games

[Open the interactive Jig](https://ask.jig.com/j/thbnvejNuWEy)

## Guide

### 1. Pac\-Man, 1980

Namco's Pac\-Man reached American arcades in late 1980 in this Midway upright cabinet: yellow sides, a backlit marquee and a screen set deep under it\. The game is already running its attract mode\. Drag anywhere off the controls to walk around the cabinet\.

### 2. Marquee and side art

The marquee is a printed panel lit from behind by a fluorescent tube, so the name glows across a dark arcade\. The side art tells the story of the game: a ghost chasing Pac\-Man, with pieces of the maze below\. T\-molding pressed into the plywood edges protects them from knocks\.

### 3. A screen turned on its side

The monitor is an ordinary 19\-inch tube, wider than it is tall, mounted on its side\. That turns its picture into a tall one, 224 pixels across and 288 high: exactly the maze's 28 by 36 tiles of 8 pixels\. The tube's scan lines, normally horizontal, now run up and down\.

### 4. Four ways only

Under the panel, a plate with a plus\-shaped gate lets the stick lean only up, down, left or right, and each direction closes one switch\. Pac\-Man never needs diagonals: the gate stops a sloppy push from turning him the wrong way at a junction\.

### 5. Four ghost minds

Each ghost picks a target tile and turns toward it at every junction\. Blinky \(red\) aims at Pac\-Man himself\. Pinky aims 4 tiles ahead of him\. Inky takes the tile 2 ahead of Pac\-Man and doubles the line from Blinky to it\. Clyde chases until he is within 8 tiles, then heads for his corner\.

Every so often all four scatter to their own corners, then return to the chase\.

### 6. Your turn

The cabinet is set to free play, so press the 1P start button to begin\. Drag the red ball to steer: push it toward the screen to go up\. Clear all 240 dots and 4 power pellets to finish the board\. A power pellet turns the ghosts blue for a few seconds, and Pac\-Man can eat them\.