In case you missed it, Saturday was Pac-Man‘s 30th birthday. To celebrate, on Friday Google put up its first-ever playable Google doodle:
Google doodler Ryan Germick and I made sure to include PAC-MAN’s original game logic, graphics and sounds, bring back ghosts’ individual personalities, and even recreate original bugs from this 1980’s masterpiece. We also added a little easter egg: if you throw in another coin, Ms. PAC-MAN joins the party and you can play together with someone else (PAC-MAN is controlled with arrow keys or by clicking on the maze, Ms. PAC-MAN using the WASD keys).
To start the game either press the “Insert Coin” button or just wait for a few seconds. Originally slated to stay up 48 hours (because they knew it was too cool to keep for just one day) the game was such a hit that they’ve made the game permanently available at www.google.com/pacman. Download the source at Github. Harold Goldberg reminisces about the game.
Pac-Man Fever video via Steve Safran. The single topped out at No. 9 on the Billboard charts, went gold in March 1982, and sold 2.5 million copies.
RELATED: Mashable’s 10 Awesome Vintage Video Games You Can Play Online; Pac-Man (& Star Trek) cuff links.
You can find me @jwindish, at my Public Notebook, or email me at joe-AT-joewindish-DOT-com.