PAC-MAN turns 30 today, Google celebrates with playable logo

**iLOVENZB** · 05-22-2010, 01:11 PM

PAC-MAN turns 30 today, Google celebrates with playable logo
Sat May 22, 2010 1:42pm

" On May 22 1980 Namco released the original PAC-MAN, and to celebrate, Google has inserted a fully-functional version of the game into its logo. Any visitor to the popular search engine can now play a Flash version of the iconic ghost-dodging, dot-munching arcade game, right in their browser.

Namco is also celebrating, and has launched a promotional PAC-MAN 30th Anniversary website, chock full of trivia, more playable Flash games, competitions, and merchandise.

The site also includes in-depth interviews with PAC-MAN's creator, Toru Iwatani, in which he reveals the reasoning behind the arcade hit's distinctive design.

PAC-MAN is the first cute game. Before PAC-MAN was released, most games were aggressive, where you did things like shoot aliens. At the time when PAC-MAN was released, the image of the game arcade was that it was a dark and scary place, and it's a place for only guys. However, we knew that there would be no future in arcades unless girls and couples would come in as well. So PAC-MAN was planned around the concept of "Let's have girls in game arcades." That's also why the enemy characters were colorful – they would be harder to hate. "

Source: PAC-MAN turns 30 today, Google celebrates with playable logo

**brilman** · 05-22-2010, 05:10 PM

I thought that the pac-man rom was still copyrighted or maybe it was the sound? guess not

still kind of funny

**anon** · 05-22-2010, 05:12 PM

Any visitor to the popular search engine can now play a Flash version of the iconic ghost-dodging, dot-munching arcade game, right in their browser.

It's not Flash, it still works with it disabled. It looks like JavaScript-based to me.

**central101** · 05-22-2010, 05:32 PM

More interesting facts:

On July 3, 1999 33-year-old Billy Mitchell of Hollywood, Florida achieve the game's maximum score of 3,333,360 points. Mitchell navigated 256 boards (or screens), eating every single dot, blinking energizer blob, flashing blue ghost, and point-loaded fruit, without losing a single life.

An funny documentary to whatch is "The King of Kong". It's based on the classic arcade game King Kong. Passionate video gamers compete to break Billy's World Record. It's a good doc and it's definitely worth watching... even if you don't play games.