That theme continued with the game’s name. My wife often does! So the verb ‘eat’ gave me a hint to create this game.” “Maybe boy stories or something to do with fashion. “I thought about something that may attract girls,” says Iwatani. You may have heard the story about how a pizza with a missing slice inspired Pac-Man’s design, but it turns out the game was designed entirely around food. And Clyde, the orange ghost, moves completely at random.īecause the player constantly has Pac-Man on the go, however, the ghosts are always changing direction and trying to achieve their goal, which adds to the challenge of the game. The blue ghost, Inky, is seeking to position itself at a similar fixed spot. Pinky, the pink ghost (naturally), simply wants to position itself at a point that’s 32 pixels in front of Pac-Man’s mouth. Instead, it’s only Blinky, the red ghost, who doggedly pursues you throughout the game. Iwatani intentionally avoided programming them with that purpose, since that would have resulted in Pac-Man zipping around the screen with four ghosts always right behind him. When you play the game, it might seem as if the four ghosts are actively chasing you. So we wanted to include female players, so it would become cleaner and brighter.” People had to go to the arcade center to play games. “The reason I created Pac-Man was because we wanted to attract female gamers,” he says. Iwatani wanted to change this, creating something that could appeal to both women and families, he says. While today’s player is slightly more likely to be male, gaming in the late 1970s was pretty much exclusively a men’s club. The point of the game was to attract girls. This week, at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Toru Iwatani, creator of the game, offered a postmortem on the industry’s biggest franchise - and told a few tales most fans have probably never heard. In keeping with the Pac-Man theme, the fuel tank was wrapped in a gorgeous layer of cyan paintwork, and the creature has been dubbed “Blue Ghost.But even the most well known icons have their secrets. These goodies consist of bolt-on foot pegs, higher-spec brake pads, and a premium coolant temperature gauge. Moreover, Taiwan’s specialists also installed a one-off radiator shield and a snazzy rear wheel cover, both of which are made of carbon.Īfter they had fitted a unique aluminum exhaust, it was time for Pitworks’ pros to apply the finishing touches. The cockpit features Koso instrumentation, a new triple clamp and custom carbon fiber clip-ons, which sport aftermarket grips and switches. To be fair, we would’ve liked to see some actual leather upholstery, but we’re not going to make a fuss about Pitworks’ approach, either.Īt the front end, the R1 is adorned with a transparent fairing that’s been fabricated using epoxy resin, as well as a bright set of LED headlights. The custom rear framework supports a fiberglass seat pan, on top of which we spot a basic foam saddle. You will find a 3D-printed box hidden inside the aforementioned module, and it’s tasked with housing the YZF’s electrics.
Next, Ted Lee and his team used CAD software to conceptualize a new subframe, which was then molded into shape by hand. They kicked things off by trimming the standard gas tank to adjust its proportions, while the original filler cap has been replaced with a cast aluminum alternative. Since the bike’s powertrain characteristics are already top-notch in stock form, the Pitworks crew was able to focus solely on the aesthetics. With a dry weight of 390 pounds (177 kg), Yamaha’s juggernaut will be more than happy to hit a top speed of 175 mph (282 kph). A six-speed gearbox feeds the oomph to a chain final drive, enabling the R1 to cover the quarter-mile distance in no more than 10.8 seconds. When prompted, the behemoth will spawn a brutal horsepower figure of 150 ponies at 10,000 rpm, along with 80 pound-feet (108 Nm) of torque at 8,500 spins. This unrelenting samurai flaunts a liquid-cooled 998cc inline-four engine, with five valves per cylinder, twin cams, and a sizeable compression ratio of 11.8:1. When it came to picking a donor, the Taiwanese craftsmen settled on a 1998 variant of Yamaha’s beloved YZF-R1 family. Of all things, the primary source of inspiration for this project was a Pac-Man character, namely the blue ghost known as Inky. On that note, let’s take a look at the firm’s most striking venture, shall we? Although motorcycle customization isn’t necessarily these folks’ main line of business, they do like to showcase their fabrication skills on a two-wheeled entity from time to time. The bespoke marvel we’ll be featuring today hails from Ted Lee’s Pitworks – a Taipei-based enterprise specializing in industrial design, CAD renderings, and 3D-printing.