Pac-Man

Pac-Man is an action Placed near the four corners of the maze are large flashing "energizers" or "power pellets". When Pac-Man eats one, the ghosts turn blue with a dizzied expression and reverse direction. Pac-Man can eat blue ghosts for bonus points; when a ghost is eaten, its eyes make their way back to the center box in the maze, where the ghost "regenerates" and resumes its normal activity. Eating multiple blue ghosts in succession increases their point value. After a certain amount of time, blue-colored ghosts flash white before turning back into their normal forms. Eating a certain number of dots in a level causes a bonus item—usually a fruit—to appear underneath the center box; the item can be eaten for bonus points. To the sides of the maze are two "warp tunnels", which allow Pac-Man and the ghosts to travel to the opposite side of the screen. Ghosts become slower when entering and exiting these tunnels. The game increases in difficulty as the player progresses: the ghosts become faster, and the energizers' effect decreases in duration, eventually disappearing entirely. An integer overflow causes the 256th level to load improperly, rendering it impossible to complete. This is known as a kill screen. ==Development==

After acquiring the struggling Japanese division of Atari in 1974, Namco began producing its own video games in-house rather than licensing them from other developers to distribute in Japan. Among the first people assigned to the division was 24-year-old employee Toru Iwatani. He assisted in the production of two sequels, Bomb Bee and Cutie Q, both released in 1979. , at the 2011 Game Developers Conference The Japanese video-game industry had surged in popularity with games such as Space Invaders and Breakout, and the market became flooded with similar titles. Iwatani felt that the crude graphics and violence of arcade games limited their appeal to men only referencing the mouth movement of opening and closing in succession. The game that later became Pac-Man began development in early 1979 and took one year and five months to complete, the longest for any video game to that date. Iwatani enlisted the help of nine other Namco employees to assist in production, including composer Toshio Kai, programmer Shigeo Funaki and hardware engineer Shigeichi Ishimura. To appeal to a broad audience including women, Iwatani opted for simple gameplay and cute, attractive character designs. Iwatani has often claimed that the character of Pac-Man was inspired by the shape of a pizza with a missing slice that he observed at lunch, but in a 1986 interview, he said that this was only partially true and that the character's appearance was also the result of rounding and simplifying the Japanese character "kuchi" (口), meaning "mouth". He was inspired by the television series Casper the Friendly Ghost and the manga series Obake no Q-Taro. The idea for the fruit bonuses was based on graphics displayed on slot machine. Namco president Masaya Nakamura had originally requested that all of the ghosts be colored red and appear indistinguishable from one another. The ghosts were programmed to display their own distinct personalities in order to prevent the game from becoming too boring or impossibly difficult to play. Each ghost's name provides a hint to its strategy for chasing Pac-Man: Shadow ("Blinky") always chases Pac-Man, Speedy ("Pinky") tries to get ahead of him, Bashful ("Inky") uses a more complicated strategy and Pokey ("Clyde") alternates between chasing and escaping. In a design session, Iwatani noisily ate fruit and emitted gurgling noises to describe to Kai how he wanted the eating effect to sound. Upon completion, the game was titled Puck Man. ==Release==

Location testing for Puck Man began on May 22, 1980 in Shibuya, Tokyo. Non-gamers responded well to it, finding it easy to learn, while many arcade regulars were unimpressed. Masaya Nakamura chose to rename the game Pac-Man, which he felt was closer to the original Japanese title of Pakkuman. After the Puck Man title was abandoned but before Pac-Man was selected, early American promotional material used the name Snapper. When Namco presented Pac-Man and Rally-X to potential distributors at the 1980 AMOA tradeshow in November 1980, executives believed that Rally-X would become the best-selling game of the year. According to Play Meter magazine, both Pac-Man and Rally-X received mild attention at the show. Namco had initially approached Atari to distribute Pac-Man, but Atari refused the offer. Midway Manufacturing subsequently agreed to distribute both Pac-Man and Rally-X in North America, announcing their acquisition of the manufacturing rights on November 22 and releasing the games in December. ==Ports==

Pac-Man was ported to several home video-game systems and personal computers. The most infamous of these is the 1982 Atari 2600 conversion designed by Tod Frye and published by Atari, Inc. This version of the game was widely criticized for its inaccurate recreation of the arcade version and for its peculiar design choices, especially the flickering effect of the ghosts. However, it was a commercial success, selling over seven million copies. Atari released versions for the Intellivision, VIC-20, Commodore 64, Apple II, IBM PC compatibles, TI-99/4A, ZX Spectrum and the Atari 8-bit computers. A port for the Atari 5200 was released in 1983, a version that is considered as a significant improvement over the Atari 2600 version. Namco released a version for the Family Computer in 1984 as one of the console's first third-party titles, as well as a port for the MSX computer. The Famicom version was later released in North America for the Nintendo Entertainment System by Tengen, a subsidiary of Atari Games. Tengen produced an unlicensed version of the game in a black cartridge shell, released during a time when Tengen and Nintendo were in disagreements over the latter's stance on quality control for its consoles; this version was re-released by Namco as an official title in 1993, featuring a new cartridge label and box. The Famicom version was released for the Famicom Disk System in 1990 as a budget title for the Disk Writer kiosks in retail stores. The same year, Namco and SNK co-published a port for the Neo Geo Pocket Color, which came with a circular "Cross Ring" that attached to the d-pad to restrict it to four-directional movement. In 2001, Namco released a port of Pac-Man for various Japanese mobile phones, being one of the company's first mobile game releases. The Famicom version of the game was re-released for the Game Boy Advance in 2004 as part of the Famicom Mini series, released to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Famicom; this version was released in North America and Europe under the Classic NES Series label. Namco Networks released Pac-Man for BREW mobile devices in 2005. The arcade original was released for the Xbox Live Arcade service in 2006, featuring achievements and online leaderboards. In 2009 a version for iOS devices was published; this release was rebranded as Pac-Man + Tournaments in 2013, featuring new mazes and leaderboards. The NES version was released for the Wii's Virtual Console in 2007, while the Game Boy version was released for the Nintendo 3DS' Virtual Console in 2011. A Roku version was released in 2011. Pac-Man was one of four titles released under the Arcade Game Series brand, which was released for the PlayStation 4, Windows and Xbox One in 2016. Hamster Corporation released Pac-Man and Xevious as part of its Arcade Archives series for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 in September 2021, marking the first two Namco games to be included as part of the series. Pac-Man is included in many Namco compilations, including Namco Museum Vol. 1 (1995), Namco Museum 64 (1999), Namco Museum Battle Collection (2005), Namco Museum DS (2007), Namco Museum Essentials (2009), and Namco Museum Megamix (2010). In 1996, it was re-released for arcades as part of Namco Classic Collection Vol. 2, alongside Dig Dug, Rally-X and special "Arrangement" remakes of all three titles. Microsoft included Pac-Man in Microsoft Return of Arcade (1995) as a way to help attract video game companies to its Windows 95 operating system. Namco released the game in the third volume of Namco History in Japan in 1998. The 2001 Game Boy Advance compilation Pac-Man Collection compiles Pac-Man, Pac-Mania, Pac-Attack and Pac-Man Arrangement onto one cartridge. Pac-Man is a hidden extra in the arcade game Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga - Class of 1981 (2001). A similar cabinet was released in 2005 that featured Pac-Man as the centerpiece. Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures (1993) and Pac-Man World 2 (2002) have Pac-Man as an unlockable extra. Alongside the Xbox 360 remake Pac-Man Championship Edition, it was ported to the Nintendo 3DS in 2012 as part of Pac-Man & Galaga Dimensions. The 2010 Wii game Pac-Man Party and its 2011 3DS remake include Pac-Man as a bonus game, alongside the arcade versions of Dig Dug and Galaga. In 2014, Pac-Man was included in the compilation title Pac-Man Museum for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC, alongside several other Pac-Man games. The NES version is one of 30 games included in the NES Classic Edition. The NES version was added to the Nintendo Classics library on April 9, 2026. ==Reception==

Upon its North American debut at AMOA 1980, the game initially received a mild response. Play Meter magazine previewed the game and called it "a cute game which appears to grow on players, something which cute games are not prone to do," saying that there's "more to the game than at first appears" but criticized the sound as a drawback, saying it is "good for awhile, then becomes annoying." Upon release, the game exceeded expectations with wide critical and commercial success. Commercial performance When it was first released in Japan, Pac-Man was initially only a modest success; Namco's own Galaxian (1979) had quickly outdone the game in popularity because its predominately male player base was familiar with its shooting gameplay as opposed to Pac-Mans cute characters and maze-chase theme. where it went on to be Japan's highest-grossing arcade game of 1980 according to the annual '''' charts, dethroning Taito's Space Invaders (1978) which had topped the annual charts for two years in a row and leading to a shift in the Japanese market away from space shooters towards action games featuring comical characters. Pac-Man was Japan's fourth highest-grossing arcade game of 1981. In North America, Midway had limited expectations prior to release, initially manufacturing 5,000 units for the US, before it caught on upon release there. Within one year, more than 100,000 arcade units had been sold which grossed more than  billion in quarters. It overtook Atari's Asteroids (1979) as the best-selling arcade game in the country, and surpassed the film Star Wars (1977) with more than  billion in revenue. Pac-Man was the United States' highest-grossing arcade game of 1981, and second highest game of 1982. By 1982, it was estimated to have had 30 million active players across the United States; Pac-Man was so compelling that a player in San Francisco reportedly shot someone for interrupting him during play. The game's success was partly driven by its popularity among female audiences, becoming "the first commercial videogame to involve large numbers of women as players" according to Midway's Stan Jarocki, with Pac-Man being the favorite coin-op game among female gamers through 1982. Among the nine arcade games covered by How to Win Video Games (1982), Pac-Man was the only one with females accounting for a majority of players. ) by Japanese company Tomy The number of arcade units sold had tripled to 400,000 by 1982, receiving an estimated total of between seven billion coins and  billion. In a 1983 interview, Nakamura said that though he did expect Pac-Man to be successful, "I never thought it would be this big." to  billion through 1983 up until February 1984. The Atari 2600 version of the game sold over copies, making it the console's best-selling title. In addition, Coleco's tabletop mini-arcade unit sold over units in 1982, the Pac-Man Nelsonic Game Watch sold more than 500,000 units the same year, the Family Computer (Famicom) version and its 2004 Game Boy Advance re-release sold a combined 598,000 copies in Japan, the Atari 5200 version sold cartridges between 1986 and 1988, and mobile phone ports have sold over paid downloads . II Computing also listed the Atarisoft port tenth on the magazine's list of top Apple II games as of late 1985, based on sales and market-share data. , all versions of Pac-Man are estimated to have grossed a total of more than  billion in revenue. Accolades Pac-Man was awarded "Best Commercial Arcade Game" at the 1982 Arcade Awards. Pac-Man also won the Video Software Dealers Association's VSDA Award for Best Videogame. In 2001, Pac-Man was voted the greatest video game of all time by a Dixons poll in the UK. The Killer List of Videogames listed Pac-Man as the most popular game of all time. The list aggregator site Playthatgame currently ranks Pac-Man as the #53rd top game of all-time & game of the year. Impact , Spain Pac-Man is considered by many to be one of the most influential video games of all time. The game established the maze video game genre, and the individual ghosts have deterministic artificial intelligence (AI) that reacts to player actions. Pac-Man is considered one of the first video games to have demonstrated the potential of player characters in the medium; its title character was the first original gaming mascot, it increased the appeal of video games with female audiences, and it was gaming's first broad licensing success. It is often cited as the first game with cutscenes (in the form of brief comical interludes about Pac-Man and Blinky chasing each other), though actually Space Invaders Part II employed a similar style of between-level intermissions in 1979. Pac-Man was a turning point for the arcade video game industry, which had previously been dominated by space shoot 'em ups since Space Invaders (1978). Pac-Man popularized a genre of "character-led" action games, leading to a wave of character action games involving player characters in 1981, such as Nintendo's Donkey Kong, Konami's Frogger and Universal Entertainment's Lady Bug. Pac-Man was one of the first popular non-shooting action games, defining key elements of the genre such as "parallel visual processing" which requires simultaneously keeping track of multiple entities, including the player's location, the enemies, and the energizers. Maze games became popular on home computers after the release of Pac-Man. Some of them appeared before official ports and garnered more attention from consumers, and sometimes lawyers, as a result. These include Taxman (1981) and Snack Attack (1982) for the Apple II, Jawbreaker (1981) for the Atari 8-bit computers, Scarfman (1981) for the TRS-80, and K.C. Munchkin! (1981) for the Odyssey². Namco produced several other maze games, including Rally-X (1980), Dig Dug (1982), Exvania (1992), and Tinkle Pit (1994). Atari sued Philips for creating K.C. Munchkin in the case Atari, Inc. v. North American Philips Consumer Electronics Corp., leading to Munchkin being pulled from store shelves under court order. No major competitors emerged to challenge Pac-Man in the maze subgenre. Pac-Man inspired 3D variants of the concept, such as Monster Maze (1982), Spectre (1982), and early first-person shooters such as MIDI Maze (1987; which had similar character designs). John Romero credited Pac-Man as the game that had the biggest influence on his career; Wolfenstein 3D includes a Pac-Man level from a first-person perspective. Many post-Pac-Man titles include power-ups that briefly turn the tables on the enemy. The game's artificial intelligence inspired programmers who later worked for companies like Bethesda. ==Legacy==

Guinness World Records has awarded the Pac-Man series eight records in ''Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition 2008'', including "Most Successful Coin-Operated Game". On June 3, 2010, at the NLGD Festival of Games, the game's creator, Toru Iwatani, officially received the certificate from Guinness World Records for Pac-Man having had the most "coin-operated arcade machines" installed worldwide: 293,822. The record was set and recognized in 2005 and mentioned in the ''Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition 2008, awarded in 2010. In 2015, The Strong National Museum of Play inducted Pac-Man'' to its World Video Game Hall of Fame. The Pac-Man character and game series became an icon of video game culture during the 1980s. The game has inspired various real-life recreations, involving real people or robots. One event called Pac-Manhattan set a Guinness World Record for "Largest Pac-Man Game" in 2004. The business term "Pac-Man defense" in mergers and acquisitions refers to a hostile takeover target that attempts to reverse the situation and instead acquire its attempted acquirer, a reference to Pac-Mans energizers. The "Pac-Man renormalization" is named for a visual resemblance to the character, in the mathematical study of the Mandelbrot set by Dudko, Lyubich, and Selinger. The game's popularity has led to "Pac-Man" being adopted as a nickname, such as by boxer Manny Pacquiao and the American football player Adam Jones. In 2012, the Pac-Man was inducted into the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. This addition was part of an initial selection (Wave 1) of fourteen video games. On August 21, 2016, in the 2016 Summer Olympics closing ceremony, during a video which showcases Tokyo as the host of the 2020 Summer Olympics, a small segment shows Pac-Man and the ghosts racing and eating dots on a running track. Merchandise A wide variety of Pac-Man merchandise have been marketed with the character's image. By 1982, Midway had about 95-105 licensees selling Pac-Man merchandise, including major companies, such as AT&T selling a Pac-Man telephone. There were more than 500 Pac-Man related products. 7-Eleven sold Pac-Man themed merchandise at its stores since the game's initial popularity in the 1980s. This has included collectible Slurpee and Big Gulp cups. In 2023, 7-Eleven included Pac-Man in its Spring 2023 marketing material including at Speedway and Stripes banner locations, and sold more merchandise around the game as well as rebranding some of its products after the ghosts. This included its house blend coffee (Clyde's Coffee Blend), two Slurpee flavors (Blinky's Cherry & Inky's Blueberry Raz), and a special limited time only cappuccino flavor (Pinky's Strawberry White Chocolate Cappuccino), the latter of which came out pink to match the ghost. Pac-Man themed merchandise sales had exceeded  billion in the US by 1982. Pac-Man related merchandise products included bumper stickers, jewelry, accessories (such as a $20,000 Ms. Pac-Man choker with 14 karat gold), bicycles, breakfast cereals, popsicles, Television Hanna-Barbera Productions produced an animated series adaptation of Pac-Man, which aired on ABC from 1982 to 1983. It was the highest-rated Saturday morning cartoon show in the US during late 1982. In May 2026 an animated web series titled PAC-MAN: Snack Breaks was announced. The series is produced by Bandai Namco Entertainment, with animation by Cartuna. Episodes will be released on the PAC-MAN Official YouTube channel starting May 22, with new episodes released monthly. Literature The original Pac-Man game plays a key role in the plot of Ernest Cline's video game-themed science fiction novel Ready Player One. Music The Buckner & Garcia song "Pac-Man Fever" (1981) went to No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, and a total of 2.5 million copies sold as of 2008. More than one million copies of the group's Pac-Man Fever album (1982) were sold. In 1982, "Weird Al" Yankovic recorded a parody of "Taxman" by the Beatles as "Pac-Man". It was eventually released in 2017 as part of Squeeze Box: The Complete Works of "Weird Al" Yankovic. In 1992, Aphex Twin (with the name Power-Pill) released Pac-Man, a techno album which consists mostly of samples from the game. The character appears in the music video for Bloodhound Gang's "Mope", released in 2000. Here, the character is portrayed as a cocaine addict. On July 20, 2020, Gorillaz and Schoolboy Q, released a track entitled "Pac-Man" as a part of Gorillaz' Song Machine series to commemorate the game's 40th anniversary, with the music video depicting the band's frontman, 2-D, playing a Gorillaz-themed Pac-Man arcade game. Film The Pac-Man character appears in the film Pixels (2015), with Denis Akiyama playing series creator Toru Iwatani. Iwatani makes a cameo at the beginning of the film as an arcade technician. Pac-Man is referenced and makes an appearance in the 2017 film Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and the video game, ''Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. The game, the character, and the ghosts all appear in the film Wreck-It Ralph, as well as the sequel Ralph Breaks the Internet''. In Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale, Kirito and his friends beat a virtual reality game called PAC-Man 2026, which is loosely based on Pac-Man 256. In the Japanese tokusatsu film Kamen Rider Heisei Generations: Dr. Pac-Man vs. Ex-Aid & Ghost with Legend Riders, a Pac-Man-like character is the main villain. In the 2010 film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, the titular character makes reference to the original Japanese name. The 2018 film Relaxer uses Pac-Man as a strong plot element in the story of a 1999 couch-bound man who attempts to beat the game (and encounters the famous Level 256 glitch) before the year 2000 problem occurs. Various attempts for a feature film based on Pac-Man have been planned since the peak of the original game's popularity. Following the release of Ms. Pac-Man, a feature film was being developed, but never reached an agreement. In 2008, a live-action film based on the series was in development at Crystal Sky. In 2022, plans for a live-action Pac-Man film were revived at Wayfarer Studios, based on an idea by Chuck Williams. In 2025, the film was reportedly canceled as a result of the It Ends with Us controversy. Other gaming media In 1982, Milton Bradley Company released a board game based on Pac-Man. Players move up to four Pac-Man characters (traditional yellow plus red, green, and blue) plus two ghosts as per the throws of a pair of dice. The two ghost pieces were randomly packed with one of four colors. Sticker manufacturer Fleer included rub-off game cards with its Pac-Man stickers. The card packages contain a Pac-Man style maze with all points along the path hidden with opaque coverings. From the starting position, the player moves around the maze while scratching off the coverings to score points. Perfect scores and other records A perfect score on the original Pac-Man arcade game is 3,333,360 points, achieved when the player obtains the maximum score on the first 255 levels by eating every dot, energizer, fruit and blue ghost without losing a life, then uses all six lives to obtain the maximum possible number of points on level 256. The first person to achieve a publicly witnessed and verified perfect score without manipulating the game's hardware to freeze play was Billy Mitchell, who performed the feat on July 3, 1999. Some record keeping organizations removed Mitchell's score after a 2018 investigation by Twin Galaxies concluded that two unrelated Donkey Kong score performances submitted by Mitchell had not used an unmodified original circuit board. As of July 2020, seven other gamers had achieved perfect Pac-Man scores on original arcade hardware. The world record for the fastest completion of a perfect score, according to Twin Galaxies, is held by David Race with a time of 3 hours, 28 minutes, 49 seconds. In December 1982, eight-year-old boy Jeffrey R. Yee received a letter from United States president Ronald Reagan congratulating him on a world record score of 6,131,940 points, possible only if he had passed level 256. ==Remakes and sequels==

Pac-Man was followed by a series of sequels, remakes, and re-imaginings, and is one of the longest-running video game franchises in history. The first of these was Ms. Pac-Man, developed by the American-based General Computer Corporation and published by Midway in 1982. The character's gender was changed to female in response to Pac-Mans popularity with women, with new mazes, moving bonus items, and faster gameplay being implemented to increase its appeal. Ms. Pac-Man is one of the best-selling arcade games in North America, where Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man had become the most successful machines in the history of the amusement arcade industry. Legal concerns raised over who owned the game caused Ms. Pac-Man to become owned by Namco, who assisted in production of the game. Ms. Pac-Man inspired its own line of remakes, including Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness (2000), and Ms. Pac-Man: Quest for the Golden Maze, and is included in many Namco and Pac-Man collections for consoles. Namco's own follow-up to the original was Super Pac-Man, released in 1982. This was followed by the Japan-exclusive Pac & Pal in 1983. Midway produced many other Pac-Man sequels during the early 1980s, including Pac-Man Plus (1982), Jr. Pac-Man (1983), Baby Pac-Man (1983), and Professor Pac-Man (1984). Other games include the isometric Pac-Mania (1987), the side-scrollers Pac-Land (1984), Hello! Pac-Man (1994), and Pac-In-Time (1995), the 3D platformer Pac-Man World (1999), and the puzzle games Pac-Attack (1991) and Pac-Pix (2005). Iwatani designed Pac-Land and Pac-Mania, both of which remain his favorite games in the series. Pac-Man Championship Edition, published for the Xbox 360 in 2007, was Iwatani's final game before leaving the company. Its neon visuals and fast-paced gameplay was met with acclaim, leading to the creation of Pac-Man Championship Edition DX (2010) and Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 (2016). Coleco's tabletop Mini-Arcade versions of the game yielded 1.5 million units sold in 1982. Nelsonic Industries produced a Pac-Man LCD wristwatch game with a simplified maze also in 1982. Namco Networks sold a downloadable Windows PC version of Pac-Man in 2009 which also includes an enhanced mode which replaces all of the original sprites with the sprites from Pac-Man Championship Edition. Namco Networks made a downloadable bundle which includes its PC version of Pac-Man and its port of Dig Dug called Namco All-Stars: Pac-Man and Dig Dug. In 2010, Namco Bandai announced the release of the game on Windows Phone 7 as an Xbox Live game. For the weekend of May 21–23, 2010, Google changed the logo on its homepage to a playable version of the game in recognition of the 30th anniversary of the game's release. The Google Doodle version of Pac-Man was estimated to have been played by more than 1 billion people worldwide in 2010, so Google later gave the game its own page. In April 2011, Soap Creative published ''World's Biggest Pac-Man, working together with Microsoft and Namco-Bandai to celebrate Pac-Man''s 30th anniversary. It is a multiplayer browser-based game with user-created, interlocking mazes. For April Fools' Day in 2017, Google created a playable of the game on Google Maps where users were able to play the game using the map onscreen. A Pac-Man-themed downloadable content package for Minecraft was released in 2020 in commemoration of the game's 40th anniversary. This pack introduced a ghost called 'Creepy', based on the Creeper. ==Technology==

The original arcade system board had one Z80A processor, running at 3.072 MHz, 16 kbyte of ROM and 3 kbyte of static RAM. Of those 1 kbyte each was for video RAM, color RAM and generic program RAM. There were two custom chips on the board: the 285 sync bus controller and the 284 video RAM addresser, but daughterboards made only from standard parts were also widely used instead. Video output was (analog) component video with composite sync. A further 8 kbyte of character ROM was used for characters, background tiles and sprites and an additional 1 kbit of static RAM was used to hold 4bpp sprite data for one scanline and was written to during the horizontal blanking period preceding each line. Sprite size was always 16x16 pixels, one of the four colors per pixel was for transparency (of the background). The monitor was installed 90 degree rotated clockwise, the first visible scanline started in the top right corner and ends in the bottom right corner. The horizontal blanking period, which starts after the level indicator at the bottom is drawn, had a duration of 96 pixel clock ticks, enough time to fetch 4 bytes of sprite data per 16 clock ticks for 6 sprites. Although attribute memory exists for them, sprites 0 and 7 are unusable: Their pixel fetch timing windows are occupied by the bottom level indicator (which just precedes the hblank) for sprite 0 and two rows of characters at the top of the screen, which just follow the hblank, for sprite 7. ==Notes==