Pac-Man was created at Namco by Toru Iwatani, who thought the violent, crude arcade games of the late 1970s appealed mostly to men and made arcades seem seedy. He chose a non-violent, cheerful game built around eating, which he thought would draw women and couples in. The title came from a Japanese onomatopoeia for chomping, paku paku taberu. The energizers were borrowed from the cartoon Popeye, and the ghosts were given different colours and personalities so the game stayed challenging. Development took about a year and five months, the longest for any video game up to that point. The game was first titled Puck Man.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.