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PAC-MAN was first publicly tested on May 22, 1980 and — now at 40 years old — is middle-age today. Celebrate with his wife and offspring:
Born on May 22, 1980, PAC-MAN immediately rose to meteoric popularity, first in video game arcades, then through an array of branding and entertainment appearances. With a brand recognition rate of 90% around the world, PAC-MAN's image is one of the most recognized on the planet and is as strong as ever as he enters his 40th year of entertaining fans of all ages.
[Ed addition: NVidia has taken this occasion to reveal it trained an AI with 50,000 hours of Pac-Man play. Not necessarily to play it, but instead to create a playable clone that was pretty close to the original.]
So take this opportunity to share some of your Pacman-memories?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 22 2020, @10:50PM (4 children)
Once you learned the pattern, it was a real ego boost. Crowds would gather 'round, because there were enough people who didn't know patterns, or couldn't do it even if they knew. This got old fast, of course; but after losing so many quarters there was also a bit of a "stick it to the man" factor in occupying the machine well into the keys.
Fun Pacman fact: It was originally going to be Pucman, but the designers realized before release that if they did that, it would be subjected to obvious vandalism of P to F, so they changed the name. Based on the high scores of many an old school arcade machine, this was a very smart move.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by el_oscuro on Saturday May 23 2020, @03:40AM (1 child)
About 39 years ago, I was a teenager without much money - but access to a Heathkit H-89. I had VT-100/NCURSES type graphics with a 9600 baud modem, and 8080 assembly. I had to work with what I had. My "pacman" kind of looked like an arrow, the monsters were reverse video double quotes, and the 9600 baud limited me to 2 of them.
But I made them bad assed. The would chase you relentlessly, but I had a 128 bit shift-register PRNG so they would turn the "wrong" way about 1 out every 5 turns. All of the other mechanics were exactly like the arcade game. Getting the controls and movement were a challenge which made the game.
And for scoring? Doing decimal arithmetic is a challenge in 8080 assembly. I was lazy and just looped my ASCII digits exactly the same way a mechanical 1970's pinball machine would.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 23 2020, @01:43PM
Why do decimal arithmetic? Just do a conversion when the score changes.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday May 23 2020, @06:02AM (1 child)
Yeah but think of the poor guy now that he's in his forties. Still expected to chase down nimble young ghosts half his age while he worries about his lumbago, high blood pressure, the fact that he has to wear glasses to be able to read anything at all, and he's overdue for a prostate exam that Mrs Pac Man has been nagging him about for months. Oy vey, and the cost of keeping the kids in college, especially the youngest...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @03:31AM
And to think, Mrs. Pac Man used to be a Mr. Not sure where Ms. Pac Man fits into this.