6 be:For me, that meant summer trips through Poland’s coastal cities with their seasonal arcade parlors; peeking inside cabinets to learn â•ď¸Ź programming and engineering secrets; and—of course—free games!
One of my favorites was PAC-MAN, whose popularity transcended the geopolitical barriers of that â•ď¸Ź time. During the heyday of space shooters, TĹŤru Iwatani’s creation stood out as one of the first video games aimed â•ď¸Ź at a broader audience, with a cute story of pizza-shaped character gobbling dots in a maze, colorful (literally!) characters, friendly â•ď¸Ź design, very little violence and everlasting fun.
Today, on PAC-MAN’s 30th birthday, you can rediscover some of your 8-bit memories—or meet â•ď¸Ź PAC-MAN for the first time—through our first-ever playable Google doodle. To play the game, go to google during the next â•ď¸Ź 48 hours (because it’s too cool to keep for just one day) and either press the “Insert Coin” button or â•ď¸Ź just wait for a few seconds.
Google doodler Ryan Germick and I made sure to include PAC-MAN’s original game logic, graphics â•ď¸Ź and sounds, bring back ghosts’ individual personalities, and even recreate original bugs from this 1980’s masterpiece. We also added a â•ď¸Ź little easter egg: if you throw in another coin, Ms. PAC-MAN joins the party and you can play together with â•ď¸Ź someone else (PAC-MAN is controlled with arrow keys or by clicking on the maze, Ms. PAC-MAN using the WASD keys).
PAC-MAN â•ď¸Ź seems like a natural fit for the Google homepage. They’re both deceptively straightforward, carefully hiding their complexity under the hood. â•ď¸Ź There’s a light-hearted, human touch to both of them. And we can only hope you find using Google at least â•ď¸Ź a quarter as enjoyable as eating dots and chasing ghosts. You know, without actually needing any quarters.
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