Pac-Man turns 30: Google honors birthday
Readers who go to the main Google search page will notice the logo has been replaced with a game of Pac-Man. Just hit “Insert Coin” and gobble away.
Google has become famous for changing its logo for special events, but it has never converted it into a playable game before. Today, it is celebrating the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man’s launch in Japan with a version that lets you steer your pizza-shaped protagonist around a maze that spells out Google’s name–at least for as long as you can evade the ghosts Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde.
To play, simply click the button that usually says “I’m feeling lucky” but now has the legend “Insert Coin”. However, if you don’t do anything, the game will start by itself.
If you click twice on “Insert Coin” then two people can play. Ms Pac-Man joins the game, with the second person controlling her movements using the WASD keys.
“PAC-MAN seems like a natural fit for the Google homepage,” reads a post on the official Google blog. “They’re both deceptively straightforward, carefully hiding their complexity under the hood. There’s a light-hearted, human touch to both of them. And we can only hope you find using Google at least a quarter as enjoyable as eating dots and chasing ghosts.”
Pac-Man debuted in the arcades in 1980, and can be found on pretty much every platform imaginable.
Incidentally, Google is not alone in celebrating Pac-Man’s birthday. The Museum of Computing in Swindon is marking the milestone on Saturday when “a specially constructed maze in Swindon Town centre’s Wharf Green will be the venue for a unique ‘Human Pac-Man’ event.” Visitors to the museum will also be able to play the game on various retro machines, without the need to stock up on 50p pieces.
Created to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the creation of the video game icon, the interactive doodle actually features all 256 levels from the original monster game hit.
