27
May
2010
Pac-Man Takes a Bite out of Global Economy and We are Happy
In commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Namco’s iconic video game character, Pac-Man, Google has decided that their new Google Doodle will be based on the design of the original Pac-Man arcade game.
The Google Doodle is basically the logo of Google in the first page of the search engine, for many years, Google has made the habit of changing the logo design to reflect major events, holidays and other pop culture moments. The Pac-Man commemorative doodle is not only impressive for its true-to-form nostalgic and retro design, but also because people can actually play it.
Instead of the usual “I’m Feeling Lucky” button (to the right of the “Google Search” button), Google has put in an “Insert Coin” button instead. When pressed, this allows the player to play a game of Pac-Man on the doodle. Pressing insert coin twice turns the game into a cooperative mode.
Controlling Pac-Man from the web browser is easy, the first player users the cursor key in order to direct Pac’s movements while a second player will use the W, A, S, D keys (for up, left, down and right, respectively) to control Mrs. Pac-Man (she’s the one with the ribbon).
If you have somehow managed to live anytime during the past thirty years without ever having played Pac-Man, the point of the game is simple; the goal is to consume all the pellets in the stage. Players move Pac-Man around the stage to eat all the pellets while avoiding the ghosts. There are several large super pellets that when eaten, allows Pac-Man to eat ghosts for short amount of time.
It is a simple, fun and addictive game. In fact, it is so addictive that during the game’s presence in the Google main page, an estimated 4.8 million hours were logged in by over 500 million unique users –that translates to around a hundred million GBP in terms of employee hours. The game is now stored in a permanent page in Google’s site.
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