Pac-Man Championship Edition comes to the App Store

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Inspired (as legend goes) by a piece of pizza with a slice missing, Namco employee Tōru Iwatani first released the classic game Puck-Man to Japanese arcades almost thirty years ago. Later that year, Puck-Man came to the United States by Midway, although wisely renamed with the knowledge of just how tempting it would be to erase just a slight wedge of that first P‘s loop. The rest is history: America’s had Pac-Man fever ever since.

While the classic Pac-Man game has since been expanded into a franchise of quasi-sequels and spin-off titles, what you might not know is that original Pac-Man designer Tōru Iwatani never had any part designing the sequels until 2007, when he was invited by Namco and Microsoft to design a true sequel to his original game. The result was Pac-Man Championship Edition and it was the best Pac-Man games since Ms. Pac-Man. And now it’s available for the iPhone and iPod Touch for $3.99.

As Gizmodo‘s Mark Wilson notes, the availability of Pac-Man CE on the iPhone before it comes to the Windows Mobile platform is a silly misstep for Microsoft. “Microsoft hiring Namco Bandai/Iwatani for another Pac-Man was the digital equivalent to hiring Michelangelo to sculpt another David,” Wilson wrote with hyperbolic charm. “So why isn’t Pac-Man CE coming to the Zune HD today? Why is Zune Marketplace stuffed with the equivalent of Minseweeper and Solitaire when Microsoft has proven their capabilities of inking deals with the greatest, most sought-after game designers in the world?”

Still, Microsoft’s failure to ink an exclusive is your gain. You can download Pac-Man Championship Edition now in the App Store.

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