【明報專訊】Masaya Nakamura (中村雅哉), the "Father of Pac-Man" (「食鬼之父」) who founded the Japanese video game company behind the hit creature-gobbling game, has died at the age of 91.
In 1955, Nakamura founded Namco (known as Bandai Namco today), a Japanese corporation best known as a video game developer and publisher. The company started out running children's rides with two mechanical horses on the roof of a department store. Namco's first original video game was Gee Bee in 1978, followed by Galaxian in 1979. Galaxian was the first video game to use RGB colour graphics.
It was Pac-Man, released in 1980, that came to define Namco's great success. The game was designed by Namco engineer and video game maker Toru Iwatani, with the idea coming from the image of a pizza with a slice carved out. Guinness World Record names Pac-Man the world's most successful coin-operated arcade game. It is estimated to have been played more than ten billion times.
In the non-violent but challenging Pac-Man game, players control the Pac-Man to eat the "biscuits" in the maze while avoiding the attack of enemies. Pac-Man is still an icon of Japanese culture, generating massive merchandise sales and having inspired TV series, theme parks and a film.
(sources: Ming Pao, The Mirror, The Associated Press)
■Photo Story
Masaya Nakamura was known as the "Father of Pac-Man".
■English highway﹕found
"Found" here is not the past tense of "find". It means to start something such as an organisation, company or school, often by providing the necessary money.
e.g. His company, founded in 2000, is going to celebrate its 17th anniversary.
■Quiz
Answer the following questions.
(Answers on next text)
1?Is the following sentence true or false?
Masaya Nakamura was the designer of Pac-Man.
(True / False)
2?What was Namco's first original video game?
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3?Which of the following equals "10 billion"?
a. 100,000
b. 100,000,000
c. 1,000,000,000
d. 10,000,000,000
4?Find in the third paragraph a word that has a similar meaning to "cut".
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■Glossary
gobble (v) 狼吞虎嚥
arcade game (n phr) 街機遊戲
maze (n) 迷宮
massive (adj) 大規模的
