pacman
Latest
Getting back to the Pac
There was a time in this country where everyone, and I mean everyone, was obsessed with a single video game. It may seem hard to believe in today's ultra-segmented entertainment market, but in the early '80s Pac-man was a true national phenomenon at a scale unmatched by the likes of Grand Theft Auto or even The Sims. Richard Poplak at the CBC uses the games re-release on Xbox Live Arcade as an occasion to look back at that singular moment in gaming history and speculate on why we can't recapture that feeling in today's industry.We're all for appreciation of the past, but there's something a little rose-tinted about this retrospective remonstration of today's industry. Pac-man did capture the national consciousness in a way that will likely never be equaled, but that's as much because of the medium's relative novelty and narrowness as it is the game's simplicity and accessibility.Despite ballooning production costs, endless licensing fiascoes, an over-emphasis of realistic graphics and all the other ills of today's gaming industry, we still enjoy a gaming market that's much more varied and potentially rewarding than the one that existed in the early '80s. It may seem at times that every other game released is another first-person shooter or beat-em-'up rehash, but any industry that can support the success of games as varied as Grand Theft Auto, The Sims and Guitar Hero is far more mass-market than it's sometimes given credit for. While this segmentation means that any one game is less likely to capture an entire nation, but it also means that the entire nation is much more likely to find at least one game it likes.We're living in a golden age of gaming ... we may just be too close to it to appreciate it. Not to worry, though -- 25 years from now we'll look back on the simple, 3D games of today and wonder why we can't recapture that feeling in our immersive, holosuite simulations of ... Pac-man.[Via Wonderland]
"Big Games" guru melds games, real world
Over at Gamasutra, Bonnie Ruberg has an interview with Frank Lantz about "Big Games," his term for games that break the bounds of a board or a computer and use the real world as the play space. The most well-known example of the form is probably Pac-Manhattan -- which uses the streets of New York in place of the classic maze grid -- but Lantz's company Area/Code has put together games ranging from a phonecam treasure hunt (ConQwest) to a massive, massively-multiplayer board game (Big Urban Game), and more.Traipsing around the streets of New York in a pink ghost costume may seem a little silly, but there's a somewhat philosophical bent to Lantz's work. In the interview, Lantz says he wants to use make games that use technology to emphasize the idea of "living with one foot in the real world and one foot in Wonderland at all times." It's a beautiful idea, and one that has the potential to change the way we look at the world. How many video games can say that?
Pac-Man is out, boyeeee!
Pac-Man, Namco's seminal arcade hit, is now available on Marketplace. The full game can be purchased for the Midnight Madness price of 400 points. It's...um...well, it's Pac-Man. What more is there to say? Go get it.
Novotable offers ergonomically-questionable retro, PC, and console gaming
We're pretty sure you don't see many tabletop arcade games around anymore for a reason -- mainly, it's not very comfortable to hunch over a screen for more than few minutes. Luckily for us, our poor PacMan and Centipede skills (and perpetual lack of quarters) made this mostly a non-issue in our arcade-trolling days, but now a new product called the "Novo Infotainment Table" (or Novotable for short) is offering to bring spine-curving videogame action for yesterday's hits and today's PC and console titles right to our homes. The Novotable is basically a 32-inch LCD mounted horizontally onto an articulating stand, attached to a pair of arcade joysticks, and stuffed with a subwoofer, Shuttle PC, and your choice of PS2 or Xbox. You also get a a stainless steel keyboard to swap out the controllers in case you want to use your multi-thousand dollar device (actual price: unknown, but presumed high) for something other than playing the biggest pixelated hits of the 80's, plus the usual lineup of PC features that you'd expect to find on a Shuttle, such as WiFi, Bluetooth, and FireWire and USB ports. We could see installing a few of these in a bar for some drunken Rampage fun, but the Mansion gameroom only accepts original pinball and arcade cabinets, so no Novotable for us, thanks.[Via Joystiq]
Pac Mac/Ms. Pac Man on your iPod
Forget Breakout. Those industrious folks at the iPodLinux Project have gotten Pac Man and Ms. Pac Man to run on their 5G iPods, as well as their nanos. It's actually an iPod port of the MAME project, and it just looks fantastic. I may have to install Linux on my 'Pod just so I can check this out.[Via Joystiq]
Killer Pac-Man shirt, from Raph Koster's Theory of Fun
Raph Koster has some merch available featuring some of the cartoons from his book, A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Our favorite: the killer Pac-Man shirt, which comes from this cartoon captioned, "People get scared of the influence games have over them -- fears that they will cause murderous rampages on the street. That's unlikely."Does that Pac-Man remind anyone of this creepy dude?[Via Wonderland]
"I am 8-bit": video game inspired art
No matter how inferior video games may seem to some critics when compared to other media, the work that goes into creating game characters and worlds is an art. The decade in which games as an art form really took off was the 1980s with Mario, Pac-Man and Zelda all being created within these 10 years. Their qualities of pixelated simplicity are almost timeless, which is probably why games based upon 80s game characters are still being made today. If you're an artist, they're also a good source of inspiration. Enter "I am 8-bit". This annual show offers a yearly exhibition for showing video game inspired works.The show which last took place at E3 '05, is specifically targeted at "reinterpretations of 80s gaming bliss". The works include paintings, sculptures, sketches and other, sometimes strange, mediums. In a sentence: art meets video game nostalgia. The next show takes place from April 18th to May 19 at Gallery Ninteen Eighty Eight in Los Angeles, so remember to mark your calendar. In the meantime, take a look at some of the examples from last year's show. Our favorite? The Pac-Man Grenade by Peter Gronquist.[Via digg]
A Pac-Man dinner table
Pac-Man strikes again! Have you always wanted your Pac-Man cocktail table to be a little more... practical? Been meaning to get a new dinner table? By replacing the standard glass top with "a custom-shaped, 1/2" thick, polished edge table top glass" Grand Idea Studios have created a domestic geek's dream table. They even had the foresight to include Clay Cowgill's MultiPac kit for 24 different variations of pellet-gobbling goodness. Unfortunately, this particular table is not for sale but should be easy enough to emulate (pun intended). Throw in a Pac-Man rug and you have yourself a pretty hapnin' bachelor pad.[Thanks, Jill; Via Inhabit]
