From
USA Today:
Quote:
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For a video game, Pac-Man is getting downright old. The ghost-wary hero with an insatiable appetite for dots turns 25 this month. From the early 1980s Pac-Mania to today's endless sequels and rip-offs, the original master of maze management remains a bright yellow circle on the cultural radar....by Matt Slagle
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Gosh, I'm old. I remember Pac-Man at my local pizza parlors with the sit-down video game and it always had a long line of people waiting to play. Every time I got up to play I completely sucked, died too quick, lost my precious quarter (a lot of money in those days), and had to go back to the end of the line while people laughed at my suckiness. It was so embarrassing and exhilirating at the same time. Especially exciting was watching people who dominated the game and showed us levels that we'd never see on our own. It was more addicting than crack (not like I know how great that must be.)
Pac-Man and Donkey Kong really birthed this $billion video game industry thatwe have today with dedicated video game programmer schools and dozens of print magazines (and even more websites offering cheats and such), and even cable channels devoted to video games (who buy-out the channels that try to cover the wide spectrum oftechnology just for the audience share. Grrr...)
Happy birthday, Pac-Man (and by extension, the simplicity of imagination)! Some of those old games were so much more elevating than the current dearth of first-person shooters.
POL9A