Google Celebrates Pac-Man’s 30th Anniversary with a Playable Logo

Anyone who knows anything about the history of video games knows about Namco’s classic arcade game Pac-Man. It’s one of only three video games on display at the Smithsonian, along with Pong and Dragon’s Lair. The pizza-shaped pellet-gobbling hero, a literal icon in the video game industry, marks his thirtieth birthday today. Just in time to cap off the excitement of the Google I/O 2010 developer conference, Google celebrates Pac-Man’s birthday by turning its front page logo into a fully playable version of the arcade classic.

Google has a long tradition of altering its front page logo to commemorate events. In fact, Google has a name for those logo alterations: Google Doodles. Pac-Man now stars in the first-ever playable Google Doodle.

How to Play

To join in the ghost-munching fun, just go to Google.com and click on the button that says “Insert Coin”, right next to the button that says “Google Search”. You can use the arrow keys or the mouse to control Pac-Man in one-player mode, though using the mouse is pretty much suicide. Clicking on “Insert Coin” a second time brings in Ms. Pac-Man for the second player, controlled via the WASD keyboard pattern quite familiar to players of first-person shooters.

For gamers who fancy themselves fast-twitch multi-tasking arcade gods, try controlling both Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man all at once, all by yourself. Here’s a strategy for those of us without superhuman gaming reflexes: position one of the Pacs in a corner next to a power pellet, while the other one goes to work on the rest of the maze. That way, the parked Pac can bail out both Pacs with one keystroke. Switch roles as needed.

Killer of Productivity, Herald of Possibility

Google makes most of its money on the Web, so it wants to move people off the desktop and onto the Web. To that end, Google creates all sorts of compelling Web applications in JavaScript — from Google Maps to Google Apps. This playable Pac-Man Google Doodle is no exception. Save for the word “Google” drawn into a horizontal maze, the application recreates many of the arcade classic’s nuances using JavaScript. As Google senior UX designer and developer Marcin Wichary notes in a post on Google’s corporate blog, “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.”

The Pac-Man game will be up on Google’s front page for forty-eight hours, so have fun with it. Google is famous for boosting the world’s productivity through easy search. For the next two days, however, going to Google’s front page will pleasantly gobble up any hope of productivity.

Of course, while you’re not getting anything done, you’ll be subtly reminded of what can be done on the Web.

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