Aaron Lee ditches exam revision to muse about Namco’s pizza-shaped icon…
More so than Mario, Pac-Man is one of the most widely recognised arcade games ever.
A girl in my A Level theatre group once subverted a conversation I began about games by proclaiming that the one game she was remotely interested in playing was Pac-Man – on her cherry red Nokia. While further prompting about which of the four ghosts – Blinky, Pinky, Inky or Clyde – she preferred yielded little response, it was the moment when I realised just how universal the appeal of Pac-Man is.
To mark the game’s 30th anniversary, Google have converted their homepage into a playable version of Pac-Man.
The maze spells out the search engine logo, and the ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button has been replaced by the historic ‘Insert Coin’ message. It’s fully playable with pick-ups, ghosts and retro sound effects to boot. There’s even a two-player mode that sees Ms Pac-Man join the game if you click ‘Insert Coin’ twice. She can be controlled by another player by using the WASD keys.
Google are no strangers to adapting their homepage to celebrate special dates, but this is the first time an interactive game has appeared.
Pac-Man was created in 1980, by Japanese game company, Namco. The design of the game came from the mind of T?ru Iwatani. Though it is widely believed that Iwatani came up with his now famous protagonist by looking at pizza with missing slices, he later shared that the yellow puck was actually based on the Japanese character for ‘mouth’.
Since the original game hit arcades in May 1980, Pac-Man, and its sequels, has seen the light of day on almost every console available. Ms. Pac-Man, which was in fact an unauthorised conversion of the original created by American programmers at General Computer Corporation, was one of the first games to gain serious mass appeal among women. And Namco’s mascot now pops up in many of their other franchises, like Ridge Racer and Tales of Symphonia.
Now that Google’s master programmers have cut their teeth on new browser tech, I wonder what else we could be in store for. Anybody up for some Space Invaders or how’s about Outrun?
Aaron Lee
Tags: anniversary, arcade, google, namco bandai, pac-man
Little PacMan is the mother of all video gamez, now http://www.google.com honors him
This is just sooooo brillent. i haven’t played pac amn for years!!
way to go. well done!
Google always does such a visually delightful job interweaving whatever they honor within their logo and this one is brilliant!!
Pacman is awesome. But a bit repetive. lol
Im liking this very much, bring it on
OMG I remember Pac Man!
Must have been about 14-15 when it came out, was all the rage lol… how far we have come!!
thanks for the game and the memories.. I sound old lol… x
PacMan is leet.
this is so cool! i’ve just played on it, didn’t realise that it was actually a game at first, i thought it was just a picture like google normally does. this proves that google really IS the best search engine! you have no chance, bing!
Ill in bed…brought a very welcome smile….thank you…a super idea.:)
What about Tetris?
Just wanted to say thank you to the programmer of google pacman – its just brilliant
sharmooooooooon! first game i realy liked. thanks pac-man
THIS IS BRILLIANT, I CANNOT CONCENTRATE ON EXAMS WITH PACMAN HERE ITS SUCH A DISTRACTION BUT ACTUALLY AMAZINGGGGGG x
Bloody Great. Have’nt seen this for years. Do another soon. Please !!!
l love pacman its like the best game i have ever played <3