http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/features/baltimoremomblog/2010/05/pac_man_30th_anniversary_fun.html

insert a coin at google.com on the homepage and play the LOGO.... awesome

Happy birthday, Pac Man!

I could have paid for college if I saved all those quarters instead of feeding them to you!  Thanks for nothin', Pacman!
;)

  Thanks Pac Man for...something... ???

Thank you, Pacman, for being challenging even now.

Yes, I played the Google Logo Pacman today. Retro awesomeness.

Thank you, Pacman, for being challenging even now.

Yes, I played the Google Logo Pacman today. Retro awesomeness.


try inserting two coins... even more fun

Happy Birthday, Pac Man!  8)

I found the perfect thing for this occasion!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v290/crazy31angel/throwback25-80s/25-4.jpg

Pacman cake!

Thank you Pacman for stealing hundreds of dollars in quarters from me over the years!

Prior to Pacman, video games were either blast-the-aliens, "Space Invader,"Galxian," etc., or about sports.  

When Pacman came out, it looked like the animation from a European cartoon festival, and why  the hell would anybody want to play that?  Then it "went viral"  as they now say, within a year, kids were lined up around the arcades clutching quarters and waiting for their turn at Pacman!

I think we had the Pacman breakfast cereal about the same time as Mr. T had his!
:-\\

I noticed the image on Google's frontpage today. Awesome stuff. :D I even tried playing it, but couldn't get very far. Of course, a joystick would've been easier to maneuver Pacman with.

As for the Pacman series games, Ms Pacman was my favorite; I became a good player on it during 1999-2000.

Here, this is perfectly horrible, but somebody had to post it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-MONIvP6kI

:D

This is what happens when DJs make records.

  The Google Pac Man was pretty easy...

  http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2006-6/1193336/BoneYard.jpeg
  http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2006-6/1193336/PacSkeleton.jpg

Happy B-day, Paccy!!! :)

Here, this is perfectly horrible, but somebody had to post it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-MONIvP6kI

:D

This is what happens when DJs make records.


Or this, which is better:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjEDX-2M7Qk&a=d9xjMhAJ9H0&playnext_from=ML

Pac-Man reminds me of Taxi when Jim got hooked on it, and come payday, Louie gave Jim his in a bag of quarters ;D

I liked the episode of Square Pegs, where Marshall got hooked on video games, so Father Guido Sarducci, was brought in to help him out.

;D

I liked the episode of Square Pegs, where Marshall got hooked on video games, so Father Guido Sarducci, was brought in to help him out.

;D


  That's a good ep.

  Also of note - coin-ops in the school?  Never happen...

http://www.google.com/pacman/

here's the permanent address now that the logo has gone back to normal

http://www.google.com/pacman/

here's the permanent address now that the logo has gone back to normal

Thanks Chucky...I was wondering where it was preserved after the regular Google logo returned. I tried playing it on Friday and Saturday but couldn't do very well with directing Pacman with the mouse.

Prior to Pacman, video games were either blast-the-aliens, "Space Invader,"Galxian," etc., or about sports.  

When Pacman came out, it looked like the animation from a European cartoon festival, and why  the hell would anybody want to play that?  Then it "went viral"  as they now say, within a year, kids were lined up around the arcades clutching quarters and waiting for their turn at Pacman!


Which was exactly the idea: open up gaming by bringing in characters, graphics, and playstyles that appealed to wider audiences.

"Around the time that we launched Pac-Man, video arcades were filled with games where you shoot aliens. It seemed very dark. It was for men, it wasn’t fashionable at all. When women would go out, they’d go out in a group of friends or with a boyfriend as a couple. And I realized that if women and couples were going to come to game centers, they had to be cheerful places.  ...  One point of differentiation was to target women gamers. The second point was the design — the character design and the graphic design were very appropriate for women, who thought it was very cute. Even if the character was an enemy, they wouldn’t be able to hate it. The colors of the maze walls are muted, so you can see the character designs. I think there was some recognition that this was the future of videogames, because this was the first character that was introduced at the time."

  - Pac-Man designer Toru Iwatani, interviewed for the 30th anniversary

I seem to remember with Space Invaders and Galaxian, you could only move your attack ship laterally.  You could move in more directions in Asteroids, but it was a miserable game.  That's why Pacman was so neat.  I think Galaga was the second generation of attack-the-aliens games. It was a little more sophisticated.

I seem to remember with Space Invaders and Galaxian, you could only move your attack ship laterally.  You could move in more directions in Asteroids, but it was a miserable game.  That's why Pacman was so neat.  I think Galaga was the second generation of attack-the-aliens games. It was a little more sophisticated.


Williams' Defender is from 1980 and offered egregious control of one's ships.  (Then again, if you thought Asteroids was "miserable", Defender was sorta like flying a 747 :)

Namco/Midway's Galaga didn't show up until 1981, but was arguably the best expression of the lateral-movement genre begotten by Space Invaders.  Movement, just like Galaxian, was still strictly lateral, but the variety of the enemies' movements, plus the ability to get double firepower by recapturing an alien-captured ship, gave it longstanding play value.  Sequels to the playstyle have continued for the past 30 years, all the way up to Space Invaders Extreme (available for the Xbox360) in 2008.  (As a diehard retrogaming fan, Space Invaders Extreme is surprisingly awesome, by the way.)

Back on the retro front, Ms. Pac and Galaga are probably the only two games of the early 1980s that can still make money in an arcade today.

Oh yeah, I forgot about Defender. 

The thing I didn't like about Asteroids is the fragments could still knock you out even after you blew up the asteroid. 

What was frustrating about all those old video games is no matter how long you played, the bad guys were always going to win.  Sure, there were always the urban legends of some kid somewhere playing Galaxian for so long that he fried the circuit board in the machine, but I never bought that one.
::)

What was frustrating about all those old video games is no matter how long you played, the bad guys were always going to win.  Sure, there were always the urban legends of some kid somewhere playing Galaxian for so long that he fried the circuit board in the machine, but I never bought that one.
::)


Google "kill screen".  They weren't urban legends - a lot of the old game designers never thought that level counters would wrap beyond 255, and used them as indexes for arrays that controlled enemy difficulty or other game configuration, resulting in crashes. 

As for that, that's the thing I liked about the old games.  No "$0.25 to continue" stuff.  Just man-against-machine until the weakest link fails.  Whether that was the programmer's forethought, the gamer's bladder, or the gamer's need for sleep, was dependent on the game. 

One of the reasons arcade culture is alive and well in Japan is that - even where the game designers allow for continued play - the gamers don't continue their games.  The closest analog to this that I've seen to this in the West is in the failure of the "Extra ball for one credit" to catch on in the pinball world.  (I'm no purist, but even I've only used the extra-ball buy-in once in my life, and that was when I was one window away from Touring the Mansion in Addams Family.  I had a great time, but felt like a heel entering my initials, and left the extra credit for getting on the board to the next player.  I don't regret touring the mansion, but that didn't mean I'd earned that score.)