Pac-Man at 30 (images)

On May 22, Namco Bandai's Pac-Man will turn 30 years old. The game was originally released in Japan on that date in 1980--but not in the United States until October of the same year. And though video games have come a very long way since then, Pac-Man is still considered one of the most influential games of all time, and is the most recognized video game character in history.

This is the official countdown timer on Namco's official Pac-Man site. Note the modern, 3D Pac-Man.

In 1982, Namco Bandai released Super Pac-Man as a Japanese sequel to the original game.

That same year, an American Pac-Man cartoon that ran in ABC's prime-time schedule was released by Hanna-Barbera Productions. It had viewer ratings as high as 56 percent. Also that year, the song "Pac-Man Fever" from Buckner and Garcia came out and made it to No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.