Today a friend on Facebook posted "LOL Google.com is awesome today! Pac-Man 30th Anniversary! You can play Pac-Man right on the page!"Sure enough its homepage logo was changed to a fully playable version of the game. Neat.
Pac-Man was first released in Japan on May 22, 1980. It is the best-selling coin-operated game in history and has the highest brand awareness of any video game character among American consumers, supposedly recognized by 94 percent of them. Pac-Man is one of only three video games that are on display at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C., along with Pong and Dragon's Lair. I get Pong, but Dragon's Lair?
I learned that Pac-Man was inspired by pizza. While dining out with his friends, Toru Iwatani ate a slice of pizza and, noticing the shape of remaining partial pizza on the table, thought of a simple idea for a game involving a character shaped just like the pizza.
I also learned that a perfect Pac-Man game occurs when a player achieves the maximum possible score on the first 255 levels (by eating every possible dot, energizer, fruit, and monster) without losing a single life then scoring as many points as possible in the last level. Only 6 people in 30 years have achieved perfect play. Impressive!
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