One of the classic video games of all time has reached an impressive mark – Pac-Man celebrates 30 years of fun and games.
Pac-Man was first released in Japan on May 22, 1980. At the time of its release, the most popular game in the arcades was Space Invaders. Pac-Man has brought a new genre to the video game arena and became one of the most popular games in the world.
In the first 15 months after its release in the U.S., Namco sold more than 100,000 arcade units, while fans spent more than $1 billion in quarters to fuel what would become known as “Pac-Man fever.”
Pac-Man Fun Facts
- The four ghosts chasing Pac-Man are called Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde.
- Despite the seemingly random nature of some of the monsters, their movements are strictly deterministic, enabling experienced players to devise precise sequences of movements for each level (termed “patterns”) that allow them to complete the levels without ever being caught.
- s verified by the Twin Galaxies International Scoreboard on July 3, 1999, the first person to achieve the maximum possible score (3,333,360 points) was Billy Mitchell of Hollywood, Florida, who performed the feat in about six hours.
- Pac-Man is one of the few games to have been consistently published for over two decades.
- In 1981, Buckner & Garcia released the song “Pac-Man Fever” which went to #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.
- “Puck-Man” was the original name of the game. It was changed due to obvious reasons.
Google Doodles an Interactive Pac-Man
Google went all out today with its doodle. This time, Google didn’t settle for an unusual logo – the doodle is actually interactive and you can play a full-fledged game of Pac-Man right there in your browser. Just hit “Insert Coin” and have some classic, 80s fun! Here’s what Google says about it:
Google doodler Ryan Germick and I made sure to include PAC-MAN’s original game logic, graphics and sounds, bring back ghosts’ individual personalities, and even recreate original bugs from this 1980’s masterpiece. We also added a little easter egg: if you throw in another coin, Ms. PAC-MAN joins the party and you can play together with someone else (PAC-MAN is controlled with arrow keys or by clicking on the maze, Ms. PAC-MAN using the WASD keys).
