How many different bonus items are there in the original Pac-Man? The answer is 8.
The original arcade Pac-Man has eight distinct bonus items, often called fruits even though the set eventually includes non-fruit symbols. They appear near the center of the maze after the player eats a certain number of dots. Each item remains on screen for a limited time, so collecting it requires a quick detour from normal dot clearing.
The sequence begins with the cherry, followed by the strawberry, orange, apple, melon, Galaxian flagship, bell, and key. Their values rise from 100 points for the cherry to 5,000 points for the key. The higher-value items become available on later rounds, with the key appearing from the twentieth board onward in the standard sequence.
Players sometimes count only the five obvious fruits—cherry, strawberry, orange, apple, and melon—or confuse Pac-Man's item list with Ms. Pac-Man's different bonus-item sequence. The Galaxian flagship, bell, and key are still part of the original Pac-Man set, which is why the canonical total is eight different bonus items.