waka waka waka waka

[Daigohji]

Thanks to Google's habit of topical logos, I'm now aware that it's Pacman's 30th birthday. Google has a playable Flash version of the game on the main page today. This seems like a good time for everyone to share their memories of this iconic series. As a kid in the 80s I remember playing the original in arcades, though sometimes on a cabinet with a dodgy joystick and knackered monitor. For some reason, Pacland is the entry I most clearly remember from the arcades, perhaps from a profound sense of disappointment. By far my favourite version is Pacman: Championship Edition on XBL, which is also the only game in my 360 library where I've completed all the achievements.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Decided to click on the Google site and the Google Doodle interactive Pac-Man game came up complete with spot-on sound effects taken from the arcade game of the same name. It's fully playable with a PC keyboard's arrow keys. Managed to score a paltry 5,910 points before getting eaten by the classic ghosts. Very fun and novel way of playing Pac-Man with the Google logo in place. It's been said that you can play this new Pac-Man game for 48 hours before it's officially retired. Makes me wonder just how many stages gameplay-wise were made for this unique Google logo ad? I'd have to say perhaps all the stages leading up the "Key" based stages.

Will Billy Mitchell "one life clear" this new fangled Google-themed Pac-Man variant game as well?

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/google ... d=10709477

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[nZero]

Merged the two nearly simultaneous posts about this cute little distraction

[StarCreator]

Thanks to Google's habit of topical logos, I'm now aware that it's Pacman's 30th birthday. Google has a playable Flash version of the game on the main page today. This seems like a good time for everyone to share their memories of this iconic series. As a kid in the 80s I remember playing the original in arcades, though sometimes on a cabinet with a dodgy joystick and knackered monitor. For some reason, Pacland is the entry I most clearly remember from the arcades, perhaps from a profound sense of disappointment. By far my favourite version is Pacman: Championship Edition on XBL, which is also the only game in my 360 library where I've completed all the achievements.

To be completely accurate, the game isn't Flash - it's coded almost entirely in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and will only use Flash for sound if HTML5 audio support isn't available.

I do need to get back into playing Pac-Man CE more...

[Ed Oscuro]

Heh, I didn't have any sound.

Three of the ghosts seem to stay in the pen for a long while at start. They didn't bother me when I hid (only for a few seconds though) in the crook of the G (the bottom left side, to the left of the power pellet), and one tried to hide from me in the last letter.

My score was pretty bad, I thought - just over 9,700.

[drboom]

I have a pattern for the first board (think I have been playing this too much) but I can only get to like 35k before my phone rings and the on-screen phone prompt pops up, and makes it so I cannot move ol' pac for a few seconds, always resulting in a death. I have answered a few calls while playing and I'm sure that I sounds like a jerk playing and trying to listen and talk to bike dealers with very pressing technical concerns.

+1 for Google!

[PC Engine Fan X!]

It sure can be quite addicting. Gotta play another round and see if I can top my paltry score.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Acid King]

I was hoping this was going to be a thread about Fozzie Bear.

[Daigohji]

I managed about 29,000 on my first attempt. Pinky caught me off guard by not chasing relentlessly like in CE, but being slightly faster than Pac-Man.

[BulletMagnet]

I was hoping this was going to be a thread about Fozzie Bear.

I think he usually spells his version with two "k"s...and possibly an "o" in place of the first "a". I need to brush up on my Muppetology.

[Elixir]

Someone should really archive this or it'll be gone tomorrow.

[Necronopticous]

paku paku paku paku

[StarCreator]

Someone should really archive this or it'll be gone tomorrow.

We have at least until Sunday - the associated Google blog post says this is going to stay up for 48 hours instead of the customary 24.

They've also kept a complete collection of previous doodles thus far, though I'm not sure if there's a licensing issue or whatever with keeping this one up indefinitely.

[Warp_Rattler]

I'm pleasantly surprised at the accuracy of this new effort. I've only gotten a few stages in, but it really seems like they tried to retain a lot of the conventions of the original--you've still got your 16,000 point max of the first level, the ghosts all have their own slightly different behavior (not to mention the change in movement about 15 seconds or so into a board, something a lot of ports don't get right), only two fruits per level, etc. Usually, you see a Pac-Man clone or port to other hardware, and the programmers generally take a "Well, you've got a maze and dots and the ghosts chase Pac-Man and that's all there really is to it, right?" attitude towards the production.

One thing that's bugging me, though, is I always had October 10th, 1979 as the day of Pac-Man's release in Japan. I'm not finding a lot of support for that now--Wired has an archived 'on this day, 20 years ago' feature from the same date in 2009, but with an addendum stating that Namco Bandai officially announced Pac-Man's birthday to be May 22nd. That makes me think it might be a sort of retconned date change, if you will. Wikipedia (yeah, yeah) used to feature the 10/10/79 but now is changed to 5/22/80; the discussion page interestingly has a lot of back-and-forth on the proper date with no hard evidence. It looks like there's a lot of material floating around putting Puck-Man in late 1979; the American release date seems to be pretty murky as well, with a copyright filing for Midway set in 1981, but the title screen showing a 1980 copyright date same as the Japanese version. Of course, I may be the only one that actually cares about this sort of pedantic trivia.

[StarCreator]

For those that didn't notice, Google Pac-Man is now available permanently at http://www.google.com/pacman/

[Ruldra]

If anyone is interested in some double play, you can add another coin and play as Ms Pacman too. Control her with WASD.