Pepsi man is a 1999 endless runner action game developed and published by KID for the original PlayStation, built entirely around Pepsi’s Japanese mascot of the same name. Combining frantic obstacle-dodging gameplay with absurdist, low-budget live-action cutscenes, it quickly became one of the strangest and most fondly remembered advertising-driven video games ever released, despite never officially leaving Japan. In this article, we’ll cover the character’s surprising origin story, the game’s gameplay and production, and how it became a beloved cult classic decades after its release.
A Marketing Hero Born to Fight Coca-Cola
To understand Pepsiman the video game, it helps to first understand Pepsiman the marketing campaign. During the 1990s, Pepsi was struggling badly in the Japanese soft drink market, making up only about 3% of all soft drink sales in the country in 1996, compared to Coca-Cola’s commanding 31% share, with roughly half of all vending machines in Japan stocked with Coca-Cola products. Advertising executive Takuya Onuki was tasked with the seemingly impossible job of selling Pepsi to a culturally Coke-saturated Japanese audience.
According to Onuki’s own account, the inspiration for the character came to him almost immediately after taking on the assignment, while observing a convenience store shelf and considering how Pepsi’s young, challenging, American identity could contrast against Coke’s deeply ingrained, traditional Japanese image. Onuki concluded that the product itself needed to become the star, leading to the creation of Pepsiman, an anthropomorphized can of Pepsi who wears a chain and speaks only in the onomatopoeic exclamation “Schwaaa!”, the sound of a soda can cracking open. The character’s ad campaigns, produced in partnership with the legendary effects studio Industrial Light and Magic, depicted Pepsiman heroically delivering refreshment to thirsty Americans, always ending each commercial with a comedic, self-deprecating injury represented by a crumpled can.
From Advertising Icon to Crossover Cameo
Pepsiman’s fictional backstory established him as a former scientist who transformed into a superhero after coming into contact with “Holy Pepsi.” The character became popular enough in Japan to spawn related spinoff characters like Lemon Pepsiman and Pepsiwoman, and was even featured as a playable character in the Japanese version of Sega’s fighting game Fighting Vipers. Riding this wave of genuine popularity, Pepsi made the decision to further promote the character through a dedicated video game.
A Tiny Budget Leads to a Genuinely Strange Game
Development of the game fell to KID, a Japanese studio that would later become far better known for visual novel series like Memories Off and the Infinity series. The game was made on an extremely low budget, a financial constraint that directly shaped one of its most memorable features: rather than producing animated cutscenes, the team filmed cheap live-action video segments showing an actor drinking Pepsi between stages, since this approach was far less expensive to produce.
That actor was Canadian performer Mike Butters, who appears in every stage transition portraying a stereotypically American man eating chips and pizza while watching Pepsiman on television, occasionally cracking open a can of Pepsi himself. The game also included 3D event scenes modeled by Kotaro Uchikoshi, who would later become a celebrated visual novel scenario writer; this was actually Uchikoshi’s very first job in the industry, originally hired to plan board game adaptations before being pulled into Pepsiman’s already-in-progress development after joining KID in 1998.
Running, Dashing, and Saving the Dehydrated
Pepsiman consists of four stages, each broken into smaller segments, with the overarching goal of Pepsiman rescuing dehydrated people by delivering them cans of Pepsi. The first three stages are set in real-world locations, San Francisco, New York City, and Texas, while the fourth and final stage takes place in the fittingly named Pepsi City.
Played from a third-person perspective, the game automatically runs Pepsiman forward through each stage, sometimes sending him barreling directly through people’s homes and other buildings, while the player focuses entirely on dodging obstacles like cars, construction equipment, pedestrians, and even Pepsi-branded hazards like delivery trucks. Players control Pepsiman using four core moves: running, dashing, jumping, and super-jumping, while collecting Pepsi cans scattered throughout each stage to rack up points. Several stages include unusual gimmick segments, such as Pepsiman getting his head stuck inside a steel garbage can, which inverts his controls entirely, or being forced to balance and steer while riding an out-of-control skateboard. Each stage concludes with Pepsiman being chased by a massive object, such as a giant rolling Pepsi can, and checkpoints scattered throughout each level ensure players don’t have to restart an entire stage from scratch after taking too many hits.
A Game That Stayed Entirely in English, Despite Staying in Japan
Although Pepsiman released exclusively in Japan on March 4, 1999, the game is, somewhat unusually, presented entirely in English rather than Japanese, complete with Japanese subtitles to translate the dialogue for its home audience. An American publisher reportedly explored acquiring the rights to bring the game to the United States, but those plans ultimately fell through, leaving Pepsiman a Japan-exclusive release despite being built almost entirely around American iconography and an English-speaking cast. According to Uchikoshi, the game did not sell particularly well upon release.
Critical Reception: Charmingly Brain-Dead
Reviewers at the time, and in the years since, have consistently struggled to categorize Pepsiman as simply good or bad. Famitsu writers described the game as “super-simple,” drawing comparisons to older arcade titles like Metro-Cross and Paperboy, while also calling it a simplified version of Crash Bandicoot. An IGN reviewer made similar comparisons, describing the gameplay as “simplistic [and] route memorization-based,” while predicting the game would ultimately be remembered most for its “extremely bizarre premise.”
Retrospective coverage has often embraced the game’s absurdity wholeheartedly. One reviewer described it as “such a gloriously twisted, charming spectacle” that it was difficult not to enjoy, noting that the game seems “obsessed” with America and portrays Americans in a manner so exaggerated it’s genuinely unclear whether the portrayal is intentional, self-aware parody. That same retrospective concluded the game was funny, but not great, ultimately landing on the memorable description of it as “charmingly brain-dead.” In 2013, Complex writer Justin Amirkhani included Pepsiman in a list of branded video games that didn’t actually suck, noting its mechanical similarity to mobile hit Temple Run despite its dated graphics.
A Cult Following Built Entirely on the Internet
Despite remaining a Japan-exclusive release with no official Western distribution, Pepsiman eventually found a massive international following thanks almost entirely to the internet. As online video platforms grew in popularity, footage and playthroughs of the game began circulating widely, introducing the bizarre advergame to an entirely new global audience who had no way of legally purchasing it through traditional retail channels. This newfound popularity was further cemented in 2019, when James Rolfe’s comedy series Angry Video Game Nerd featured an episode dedicated to the game, with Mike Butters reprising his role as the in-game television character, this time revealing in a comedic bit that his life had been taken over by Pepsiman, who had turned his entire family into crushed Pepsi cans scattered around his house.
In 2015, Retro Gamer magazine ranked Pepsiman eighteenth on their list of “The 20 Greatest PlayStation Games You’ve Never Played,” a fitting tribute to a game that had, by that point, become considerably more famous through internet culture than it had ever been through actual retail sales in Japan.
A Lasting, If Unofficial, Legacy
Pepsiman’s cult status has continued to grow in unexpected ways. Dedicated cosplayers have created costumes based on the character’s various drink-themed variants, and the actor behind the game’s memorable “TV Game Guy” found renewed, unexpected fame decades after the game’s original release thanks to its rediscovery online. The game has even inspired fan-made tribute projects, including an unlicensed, free remake released under an entirely different name to avoid copyright issues, built with modernized graphics while still honoring the spirit of the original.
Final Thoughts
Pepsiman stands as a perfect example of how a low budget, an absurd premise, and genuine creative commitment to that absurdity can combine into something far more memorable than its humble origins as a piece of soft drink advertising would ever suggest. Born from Pepsi’s genuine struggle to compete against Coca-Cola in the Japanese market, the game’s bizarre live-action cutscenes, simple but addictive gameplay, and total commitment to its own ridiculous premise have earned it a lasting cult following that, ironically, has likely introduced far more people to the character worldwide than its original Japan-exclusive release ever managed on its own.