Okay, for those of you who may not know, I'm a HUGE '80's arcade game fan. You know, the kind of games that you'd cruise down to your local 7 Eleven or Circle K after school to play as a kid. Back when games didn't have 15 joysticks, 57 buttons and 20 page manuals. Back when games were GAMES!
There was nothing quite like having a pocket full of quarters and being able to wander around in a darkened local arcade, discovering the latest release from Williams, Midway, Sega or Atari. Journey, Depeche Mode or Def Leppard was typically blaring on the Jukebox, judicious use of black lights and neon accented the blackened walls and regardless of where you stood, the scent of chips and "pump cheese" coagulating underneath a heat lamp lingered in the air. Ah, Good Times.
Today marks the 30th anniversary of Pac Man. I can't tell you how many times I've shoveled quarters into that beloved machine. I'd never mastered more than a few levels, but I definitely had the fever. Of course there were other classics; Donkey Kong, Excitebike, BattleZone, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Dig Dug, Galaxian, Galaga, Tempest, Centepede and Pole Position. The list goes on and on... But today it's all about Pac Man, the game that literally launched a gaming revolution.
Google is hosting a cool Doodle this weekend that's actually a JavaScript version of the game. It's quite playable- containing 256 levels. The familiar cut-scenes, Ghosts and the Yellow man himself are all there. No quarters are required. (Here's a hint: The arrow keys control Pac Man, but if you click on the Insert Coin button 2 times, Ms. Pac Man appears! That's right, you can simultaneously play a level with both characters! She uses the w, a, s and d keys)
Quick Facts:
"Pac Man" was originally called "Puck Man", however the Title was changed prior to being officially launched in the United States, as Arcade Operators were afraid that patrons may "deface" the marquee.
Ms. Pac Man was actually an unofficial sequel to the original game, created by Midway in the US. However, Namco later officially embraced the title in Japan.
Super Pac Man was intended to become the sequel to Pac Man, however the popularity of Ms. Pac Man eclipsed Pac Man and became the sequel to the original. Super Pac Man was then released as the "third" game in the franchise. Despite being technically superior in architecture and game play, it remained less popular than the original.
Pac Man used the Zilog Z-80 Central Processing Unit, running at just over 3 MHz. The whole game had a footprint of only a few Kilobytes. In comparison, the iPhone 3GS has an ARM CPU running at 600 MHz and 256 Megabytes of memory (and at least 16 Gigabytes of storage).
Good Night and God Bless!
No comments:
Post a Comment