Bandai Namco Celebrates Pac-Man’s 45 Years Ahead of the Upcoming Franchise Re-Imagining

Pac-Man’s 45th anniversary is getting marked with a year-long celebration campaign by Bandai Namco and an upcoming Shadow Labyrinth game, which is about to serve as a re-inventing of the franchise’s core concepts.

Bandai Namco plans the year-long celebratory campaign to run throughout 2025 and into early 2026 under the theme of the ‘imPACt,’ implying the legacy that the series has built since the launch of the first arcade maze video game in 1980.

The main highlight of Bandai Namco’s year of festivities is set to be released Shadow Labyrinth, which is about to serve as a reimagining of the Pac-Man franchise.

The game, which has been in development since 2020, is a 2D action platformer with a playable character known as The Swordsman, guided by a yellow orb called Puck. Shadow Labyrinth already has a prequel story, which was told in the Secret Level series in the episode titled Circle.

The reinvention of the Pac-Man franchise is set to release in 2025 for PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch. It is worth noting that according to the game’s producer, Seigo Aizawa, there is no planned post-launch downloadable content, as the game will be “completed in one package.”

On top of that, Bandai Namco is planning to launch a Pac-Man Simulator on Roblox as part of the game’s 45th anniversary celebration.

Pac-Man is one of the longest-running video game franchises in history, and the game has seen regular releases for over 40 years. Pac-Man’s IP has sold nearly 48 million copies across all of the platforms and has grossed over $14 billion as of 2016, a great part of which ($3.5 billion) was earned by the very first arcade title which sold more than 400,000 cabinets all over the world within a decade of its release.