The 1978 Namco video game Toru Iwatani created before Pac-Man was Gee Bee.
Gee Bee was Iwatani’s first video game designed in-house at Namco. He originally wanted to make a pinball machine, but the company’s executives rejected that proposal. As a compromise, he created a hybrid that combined pinball-style bumpers and spinners with the block-breaking mechanics associated with Atari’s Breakout.
The result was a rotary-dial arcade game in which players bounced a ball around a playfield, striking bricks, bumpers, and “NAMCO” rollover symbols. Gee Bee helped establish Namco as a video-game company, even though it was not as commercially successful as the firm hoped. It was followed by the 1979 sequels Bomb Bee and Cutie Q.
Cutie Q is a common mix-up because it was also designed by Iwatani and belongs to the same early Namco lineage. Pac-Man came later, debuting in 1980 and turning Iwatani into one of the most influential designers in arcade history.