Puck-Man - and other interesting video game trivia
 

So, in class today one of my friends was wearing a Pac-Man shirt - pretty cool shirt actually. Anyway, another classmate proceeded to tell us that Pac-Man was originally supposed to be titled Puck-Man and that the pills he eats were originally called pucks, but the name was changed because with only a minor alteration to the letters (remove an arc on the P) you get "Fuck-Man"

Is this true? If so it's a pretty interesting piece of trivia.

And, in an effort to make this thread have a little more substance than that, how about adding other bits of interesting video game trivia.

Here's another one from me, albeit fairly well-known:

Super Mario Brothers 2 in America for the NES was really a game called Doki Doki Panic which was altered to have a Mario Bros motif. This is why it's so different from the other Mario games. The reason it's different is because the REAL Super Mario Bros 2, which was released in Japan, was considered to be too difficult for the US markets. It is available for play as the "Lost Levels" on Super Mario All-Stars for SNES now.

Here's a page about it: http://www.classicgaming.com/tmk/smb2_ddp.shtml

And a picture: http://osg.disflux.net/features/doki2.gif

That explains why I always felt so ripped off after getting SMB2, ;). I hope to learn so more intruiging facts from this thread.

The bit about why Puck-Man became Pac-Man is true, but I'm not so sure about the pills being called pucks. The game, although distributed in the West by Bally-Midway, was developed by Namco of Japan, and "pucka-pucka" is Japanese onomatopoeia for someone eating in a noisy, greedy fashion.

I wish I could think of a good piece of trivia to offer up, but I'm tapped... maybe something will come to me.

The name of Mario (Originally just Jump-man in the first Donkey Kong) came from one of the workers at a Nintendo warehouse.

Nintendo, as a company, was founded in the 1800's. They originally manufactured Hanafuda playing cards in Japan.