Pac-Man

Today was the 30th anniversary of PAC-MAN. I saw lots of tweets about Google's playable banner today, but didn't get around to it until just now. Nicely done, Google.

When I was really little, and we were at my Grandma Oak's house, they pulled out an Atari. As far as I remember, this was my first exposure to video games. (We had a ColecoVision at our house a few years later. The games I member from that were Donkey Kong and Defender. I was good at both, but not Steve Weibe good. And then there were PC games... But I digress.) One of the games Grandma had was Pac-Man. I remember thinking how much fun it was.

A few years later, I had my first paper route. It was a short one, just went down our street. At the end of the street was a pizza place. The pizza place had two video game machines, Space Invaders and Mrs. Pac-man. The Mrs. Pac-Man machine called to me from time to time as I finish delivering papers. I played too much.

They also had that silly little Pac-Man Saturday morning cartoon. I used to think it was hilarious that the ghosts had their suits at home hanging on the clothes line, for some reason...

Later, after a move a few miles North, I had another paper route, this one with a bowling alley at the end of it. Lot of pinball machines, and Pac-Man. I wasted a lot of time in that bowling alley. (They took the paper.) The owners used to call me the pinball wizard. I think my Mom was happy when I stopped that route.

Years later, I discovered there was a sit down head-to-head Mrs. Pac-Man machine. (My mission, I think.) Good times.

When I was a freshman in college, the bowling alley was right next to a giant games center, with lots and lots of video game machines. It's long gone now, but in it's day, it was sweet. PacMan/Mrs. Pacman shared time with Tetris. Lots of Tetris.

I liked playing PacMan on the arcade machine, because you only needed to use one hand. No endless mashing of buttons. Just up/down/right/left. When your right hand got tired, you could switch to you left hand. Or alternate between levels. Additionally, nearly half your body was free while you played the game, which allowed for doing a little dance as you played.

Anyhow. Happy birthday Pac-Man.