
* Pac-Man was based on the Japanese character for 'mouth'.When I was growing up, my dad had the best job I could possibly imagine: he was an arcade game and pinball technician. (To move, swipe the way you want to go.) This, as a Guardian colleague points out, is the first time that Flash has made it onto the front page of Google. ** Although the sound is in Flash - so that doesn't work on the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad.


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.Ĭharles Arthur adds: interestingly, as Apple, Google and Adobe war with each other over the importance of Adobe's Flash system, the doodle is written entirely in HTML, CSS and Javascript - Flash isn't required. Incidentally, Google is not alone in celebrating Pac-Man's birthday. You know, without actually needing any quarters." And we can only hope you find using Google at least a quarter as enjoyable as eating dots and chasing ghosts. There's a light-hearted, human touch to both of them. They're both deceptively straightforward, carefully hiding their complexity under the hood. Wichary says Pac-Man "seems like a natural fit for the Google homepage. Ms Pac-Man was also one of the first video games to attract a female following at a time when most players were (at least reputedly) spotty boys.

The games soon appeared on home computers, too, though a Pac-Man cartridge for an Atari 800 cost more than £30. For me, that meant summer trips through Poland's coastal cities with their seasonal arcade parlors peeking inside cabinets to learn programming and engineering secrets and – of course – free games!"Īlthough Tōru Iwatani's Pac-Man and Ms Pac-Man are now free "casual" games, they were state-of-the-art in the early 1980s, and they harvested billions of dollars in loose change. Marcin Wichary, Google programmer and senior user interface designer, says: "When I was growing up, my dad had the best job I could possibly imagine: he was an arcade game and pinball technician. Ms Pac-Man joins the game, with the second person controlling her movements using the WASD keys. If you click twice on "Insert Coin" then two people can play.
