Google is celebrating Pac-Man’s 30th birthday by offering web surfers access to a free version of the classic title.
To play Pac-Man, go to google.com during the next 48 hours and press the “Insert Coin” button or wait for a few seconds.
The game – recreated by Google developers Marcin Wichary and Ryan Germick – includes Pac-Man’s original game logic, graphics, sounds, personalities, bugs and even the graceful Ms. Pac-Man.
“During the heyday of space shooters, Tōru Iwatani’s creation stood out as one of the first video games aimed at a broader audience, with a cute story of pizza-shaped character gobbling dots in a maze, colorful (literally!) characters, friendly design, very little violence and everlasting fun,” reminisced Wichary.
“[And so] Pac-Man seems like a natural fit for the Google homepage. They’re both deceptively straightforward, carefully hiding their complexity under the hood. There’s a light-hearted, human touch to both of them.”
Awesome!
But what other classic games would you like to see Google recreate?
I personally wouldn’t mind playing Starflight II: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula again – a game which once consumed an entire summer of mine with deep space exploration, colonization and trading.
Or how about some of the ancient BBS door games, such as Legend of the Red Dragon (LOTR), Solar Realms Elite (SRE) and Trade Wars ?
And of course, who could forget Atari’s 3D Tic Tac Toe, Arcade Asteroids, Arcade Pong, Battlezone, Space War, Yars’ Revenge, Super Baseball, Missile Command, Centipede and Lunar Lander?
Lastly, how about a nice game of chess with Dr. Stephen Falken’s WOPR (aka Joshua)?
🙂 Play on!
