Namco Gives Voice To Pac-Man Series

Voice production company Outsource Media has announced that as part of the 25th Anniversary celebrations for Namco’s Pac-Man franchise, the character will be given a voice for the first time in a video game, as part of forthcoming console title Pac-Man World 3. The voice will be provided by Martin T. Sherman, whose previous acting work includes Gangs of New York, Band of Brothers, Batman Begins and, as Orson Welles, in BBC drama Days That Shook The World. Mark Estdale, voice director and CEO of Outsource Media commented: “Casting a voice for such a gaming icon was a challenge. I was expecting to just deal with his half eaten cheeseness, 'wocka wocka' and his icon status but thankfully we were given a well-written and crafted script with lots of character to base the casting on”. Although Pac-Man has not traditionally been a speaking character in games, a voice was provided for him by TV regular Marty Ingels in the 1982 cartoon series, which became the visual inspiration for Namco’s 1984 arcade platformer Pac-Land. Famously inspired by a pizza with a slice missing, Namco’s Toru Iwatani created the original Pac-Man arcade game in 1980 and in the process gave life to one of the industry’s most iconic characters. A notable move away from the shoot ‘em-up dominated titles of the day, the Pac-Man games were one of the first to be almost equally popular with both sexes. In related news, Gamasutra sister publication Game Developer magazine will be featuring a postmortem of Pac-Man by creator Iwatani on the cover of its forthcoming December 2005 issue, as well as a postmortem of the entire Pac-Man franchise written by the magazine's editors.