is a Japanese video game designer who spent much of his career working for Namco. He is best known as the creator of the arcade game Pac-Man (1980). Early life Iwatani was born in the Meguro ward of Tokyo, Japan on January 25, 1955. While in kindergarten, he and his family moved to the Tōhoku region of Japan after his father got a job as an engineer for the Japan Broadcasting Corporation. After becoming a junior high student, Iwatani returned to Tokyo and graduated from the Tokyo Metropolitan University High School, before graduating from the Tokai University Faculty of Engineering. Iwatani was self-taught in computers without any formal training in programming or graphical design. He often filled his school textbooks with scattered manga, which he claims had a major influence on the character designs of his games. Career At the age of 22 Iwatani joined the Japanese video game publisher Namco in 1977. Before he had joined, Namco had acquired the rights to the Japanese division of Atari, Inc. from Nolan Bushnell, giving them the rights to distribute many of the company's games, such as Breakout, across the country. This became an unprecedented success for Namco, and made them interested in producing their own video games in-house instead of relying on other companies to make games for them. Iwatani was assigned to the video game development division of the company upon arrival. He originally wanted to create pinball machines, however Namco executives declined the idea due to patent-related issues. As a sort-of compromise, Iwatani was allowed to create a video game based on the concept of pinball. With the assistance of programmer Shigeichi Ishimura, Iwatani created Gee Bee, released in 1978. While not as successful as the company hoped, Gee Bee helped Namco get a foothold in the gradually-expanding video game market. Two sequels were released in 1979, Bomb Bee and Cutie Q, which Iwatani worked on as a designer. Towards the end of 1979, Iwatani grew disappointed towards the video game industry, thinking that the market only appealed to men through its usage of violent "war" games, such as Space Invaders, and sports games reminiscent of Pong. 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