PAC-MAN 30th Anniversary  

Yep, the last 30 years certainly have gone by pretty fast Hatley. They keep getting quicker every year don't they. Yeah, go and have a game. Just because you can!

Hi there Wizzy! I have never heard of Vic20 or ZX81. I think I will have to go back to Google and find out what they are. Hope I don't get caught up playing Pacman for too long while I am there!

I saw that the Vic20 was an earlier version of the Commodore 64. That was popular here and I remember friends having one, but I am not sure if we got the Vic20 here or not.

I found this about the ZX81. "The Sinclair ZX81 is such a slow and difficult to use computer, many people found that it works better as a door-stop than as a computer..."

I am not sure if this computer ever made it to Australia as I do not remember it at all.

Vic 20 : indeed it was, & we had one of those as well... might even still have it in the loft...I think theres an Atari up there and loads of programs.
ZX81 : was revolutionary at the time. It started my husbands love of computer games. I always said, it was lucky i got pregnant before we got the computer. I think whichever one we had towards the end of 1983 must've broken because we had our second child in the summer of '84

Wow, maybe you will have to search them out and see if they still work. Great fun on a rainy English day!

Yeah, I love what Google do as well with changing their homepage. This is the first time that I have seen one that is interactive though.

I used to play Pacman at the arcades in the 1980's as well as on Atari. I have never played it online until today though. The arcades were a lot simpler back then than they are now. (a lot cheaper too)

Yeah, I think it will be gone after today. Hopefully they will keep it up there for a bit longer, but I doubt that they will.

I know that there are archive websites that allow you to see what a website looked like in the past, but I cannot remember if you can pick a specific day or not. There was one archive site that I used last year called the way back machine or something like that. It was pretty cool!

They said they will keep it up for 48 hours.

Google have a separate part of their website devoted to their logo's, if you type in Google, "Google Doodle's", it will come up with an archive of all their past logo's.

I hope they add this Pacman logo, to the archive.

I think this Pac-man thing is another Easter egg of Google, I have a hunch that you can always bring it out if you know the "magic words" heheh

I hope so, I think it's really cool.

Wow, I just went to the Google Doodle's page and it is really comprehensive. I had no idea that you could go back through them all. They have one for nearly every day. It must be a full time job for someone there to come up with all of these.

I know, I never new about it till I looked it up.

It must be an awesome job though. I hear at one of Google's buildings, they have slides and stuff. =P

They certainly would be a great company to work for. I have also heard that they are a fun lot to work for. You would think that they would pay well too with all the money that the company makes!

I know.

To think that a small company grew into a multi billion dollar company. I would hope they paid well also.

I want to work for a fun company, like them. There are lots of gaming company's that I would like to work for, it would be so fun. =)

Working for a gaming company would be loads of fun. I can see my son doing something like that when he is older. He is a gaming addict!

I am an addict as well, lol.

I am playing on games all the time, hardly ever stop. =P

If I make my own games, then I get to play my own, and that would be really cool.

Once I start to play games I get addicted and spend hours on them, but these days it does not happen very often. I sometimes play the Nintendo Wii with my son, but he likes to play games that I don't like. It would be great to create and play your own games and get paid for it. Those game creators are very talented.

I really only play games on the PC, mostly MMORPG's, I enjoy the multi player aspect, and the fact they never end.

I like the Wii too, I just feel a but silly sometimes playing it, lol.

My friend was the one who introduced me to making games, he was telling me about C++ (the code developers use), and showing the game he was making. It looked a bit like a Pokemon game, but still very good for his first game. He drew all the things in the game himself, I couldn't believe it. =P It has inspired me to make games, so I am going do a games course next year in Uni.

That would be awesome to make and play your own games. It seems like this area is a great passion of yours, so if you can earn a living from it, then that sounds like a great course to do.

Yea it is, it should be really fun.

I hear in the game studios they have lots of fun, maybe even playing games. =P

That's Awesome!

The game can be found here permanently now. http://www.google.com/pacman

Yea, I found it already in the archive, now we can play it whenever. =D

Yep...WOOHOO!!!

Thanks for the best response. =D

Welcome to MyLot Archon309.

Level 47! Wow, that is incredible.

I cannot remember how many levels I got through as a kid playing it, but I am pretty sure that I never got that far. I did with Asteroids though. I remember clocking that game a couple of times! I remember the stress of things going so fast at those higher levels. You don't even get time to breathe!

hahah.. Well, we were doing nothing the whole afternoon at that time and I played for hours! My hands really ached that day!

Yeah, I remember the jostick ache! The red mark would stay on there for hours!

yeah. and the pain ... I can almost feel it again. hahaha!

It is a simple yet addictive concept. I could never have imagined the type of gaming that there is now when I was playing these simple games in the 1980's!

Hi Jen, I remember discussing gaming with you before.

It was a fun game for sure. Did you go and play the Google version yet?

I have not. It has been years since I played Pacman. I will check it out though. Take care.

Cool, let me know how far you get!

Hurray for RawBill for starting this discussion! :)

Hi Ravinair, I have Google as my home page so as soon as I log into the internet I see what they are celebrating each time. This time I was excited to see that it was interactive. Hopefully they do it with other games as well over the coming years. It definitely brought back some memories for me as well!

Thanks Archon309.

I had forgotten that there was a Ms Pacman as well. I have just remembered that there was even a Pacman cartoon on TV at some stage!

Ah yes, Asteroids took lots of my time. I managed to clock that game a couple of times! (clock means to score the maximum points that the game can go to before it sets itself to zero again.)

I loved Frogger too. I had that on Atari later, so I did not play it as much as Asteroids and Pacman which were among the first games that I bought. I found my old Atari a couple of years ago at my parents house. My sister has it now. We played it and unfortunately only some of the games still worked.

My kids thought it was pretty crappy!

I agree. It is awesome to see them do something like this!