He decided to create a video game that appealed to women, with cute, colorful character design and easy-to-understand gameplay, based around the concept of eating.

Working with a small team of nine employees, Iwatani created Pac-Man, test-marketed on May 22, 1980, and released in Japan in July and in North America in October.

[4] An often-repeated story is that Iwatani left Namco furious at the lack of any recognition or additions to his pay, which he has claimed to be false.

He also worked as a producer for many of Namco's arcade games, including Rally-X, Galaga, Pole Position, Ridge Racer and Time Crisis.

[6] On June 3, 2010, at the Festival of Games, Iwatani received a certificate from Guinness World Records for Pac-Man having the most "coin-operated arcade machines" installed worldwide: 293,822.

[7] He was portrayed in the Adam Sandler sci-fi comedy adventure Pixels by actor Denis Akiyama,[8] while Iwatani himself has a cameo as an arcade repairman.