Pac-Man Makes Guinness Book

phresno writes "As a gaming icon, everybody loves Namco's Pac-Man. The arcade machine sold over 293,000 units in just eight years of its initial release and is fondly remembered even 25 years later. The success of Pac-Man has awarded it not only pop culture status, but a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. Long live Pac-Man!"

Comments

fp?

[Mikito]

I always preferred Ms. PacMan myself. Better graphics and music.

Re:fp?

[Saven Marek]

Ahhh how I long for the days when games weren't all just a different version of the same first person shooter.

Re:fp?

[FidelCatsro]

Ms PacMan was a better game , in the same way that Super mario Bros 3 was better than Super Mario brothers.
The reason the cred goes to PacMan is that without it Ms PacMan would have probably been what PacMan was.
Definantly though , Ms PacMan was one sequal that really did improve upon the origional , They learnt the leassons from PacMan and build upon its strength to build a far better game . unlike many sequals we see nowadays which add little more than a slick of paint and some mior tweaks and end up forgetting why the game was fun in the first place

Re:fp?

[Mikito]

In my rush to get a topical first post (I think I actually did it), I left out comments which I would have included otherwise.

Ms. Pac Man, unlike its predecessor, had a series of animated interludes when you completed a number of levels. I think it was complete 4 levels, see a short cartoon, complete another 8 levels, see another cartoon and so on. It's been years since I've played the game.

Ms. Pac Man also had a variety of mazes, which made the game a little more interesting...it also helped avoid (or delay) the screen burn-in that a lot of arcade games were prone to back then.

Even so, I salute Pac Man for being included in the Guinness Book of World Records, and for its appetite of my quarters.

Re:fp?

[caryw]

Ms Pacman? classic. anyone remember the funny shaped cartridge it came in for NES?

Link to java emulator based on MAME with Ms. Pacman
--
Fairfax County, VA message board and chat

Re:fp?

[antdude]

Yep, I had the Pac-Man fever as a kid as well. I enjoyed Super Pac-Man as well. Does anyone remember Baby Pac-Man (pinball + maze arcade)? :)

Re:fp?

[h4rm0ny]

"People think that video games influence children. Ha! If that were true then my generation would be spending all its time in darkened rooms, swallowing pills and listening to repetitive music!"

Re:fp?

[Anonymous Coward]

first person chewer?

Re:fp?

[shreevatsa]

Surely, you've never heard of PacManhattan, then?
The images on the site are down at the moment, sadly, for there were some real good pics.
Anyway, here's Wired reporting on it.

Re:fp?

[golgotha007]

Yep, I had the Pac-Man fever as a kid as well.

You know, I didn't have the fever, but my parents and friends thought that I should. So, for my birthday (in 1982), one present was a Pacman Atari 2600 cartridge, another was Buckner & Garcia's music CD of video game songs, another was a Pacman t-shirt, etc.

jeez, to this day I will never forget that song, "Do the Donkey Kong". So lame, but so unforgetful.

Re:fp?

[Anonymous Coward]

In my rush to get a topical first post (I think I actually did it), I left out comments which I would have included otherwise.


Wow, first time I've seen someone think they got first post and actually do have it!

Re:fp?

[Anonymous Coward]

first person chewer?

Almost. Pac-Man is third person, so may I suggest:

Third person chewer

Crap, that doesn't work either.

Third pizza chewer?

That suggests it's be thrown up twice and some poor sap is eating it again. I won't help with jokes anymore.

Re:fp?

[Dun Malg]

Does anyone remember Baby Pac-Man (pinball + maze arcade)? :)

Funny you should mention, as just last week I stripped all the interesting parts out of a Baby Pac-Man machine someone dumped in the alley behind my workplace. I don't remember ever seeing one in action, but judging by the miniscule pinball field, it looked like a pretty weak concept.

Re:fp?

[Plaid Phantom]

Slashdot a site where the images are already down? That's no fun.

Re:fp?

[Tolookah]

We all know you just liked Ms. PacMan because she kicks high...

Re:fp?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent funny

Re:fp?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhh how I long for the days when games weren't all just a different version of the same first person shooter.

Yes, it's terribly hard to tell games apart these days. I saw my brother playing Katamari Damacy the other day, and I was like "wow, I didn't know you were into Doom 3".

Oh, wait.

Re:fp?

[antdude]

It was pretty dumb, but as a kid I loved the arcade part. hehe

Re:fp?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, back in the glory days when the difference between two games was a 4 pixel red bow.

Re:fp?

[niktemadur]

Which begs the question: when is that first-person Pac-Man coming out?

Picture yourself inside the maze, the yellow upper lip moving up and down on the bottom of the screen, you turn a corner and Yikes! A raspberry colored ghost is coming at you! You turn around and Yikes! Blueberry ghost was behind you all the time! Quick! Hard left!

All the while, of course, there is a tiny bird's eye view of the maze on the left of the screen, but you lost sight of it in your greedy appetite for for the banana.

Somebody's missing out on a fortune by not having come out with this.

Re:fp?

[Golias]

Third person chewer

Sounds like the title of an "H" game, or maybe a new chapter of "Leisure Suit Larry."

Re:fp?

[innocent_white_lamb]

Which begs the question:

Actually, it raises the question.

when is that first-person Pac-Man coming out?

Here you go.

Re:fp?

[Brad1138]

I always preferred Ms. PacMan myself.

Another cheap attempt to bring Breasts into a /. discussion.

Re:fp?

[gozar]

So, for my birthday (in 1982), one present was a Pacman Atari 2600 cartridge, another was Buckner & Garcia's music CD of video game songs, another was a Pacman t-shirt, etc.

Since CDs weren't released until 1983, don't you mean the Pac-Man Fever LP? :-) That was the first album I ever purchased. I still have it and play it every once in a while. I bought the CD re-release, but it doesn't have the same "spirit" as the original LP.

Re:fp?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, back when all games were pacman variants or vertical shooters.

Re:fp?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ms Pacman? classic. anyone remember the funny shaped cartridge it came in for NES?

You mean like all of the other Tengen (Atari's NES label) cartridges?

Tengen made a way better Tetris for NES than Nintendo.

Re:fp?

[golgotha007]

whoops, make that cassette.

Sweet

[gordgekko]

293 000 units? I think I dumped that many quarters into the game during the early 80s.

Re:Sweet

[AndroidCat]

That's probably only counting the offical units. There were huge numbers of knock-off copies of the game. Quite a number of the initial court cases establishing that copyright applies to software in ROMs involved Pac-Man (and Apple ][ knock-offs).

Re:Sweet

[Karl Tacheron]

Hmm... Pac-Man or a down payment on a house... choices...

Fantasic...

[DanielNS84]

Took long enough...now for the Monkey Island games...

Good for pacman

[FidelCatsro]

I loved Pac-man , it was one of the first games i ever played and got hooked on it .
Everything about it was just brilliant at the time , it was stylisticly wonderfull and pac-man has rightly so earnt its place amongst our cultural iconography.
Though i wonder why it took the guinness book people so long to recognise Pac-man.
*hums level up noise*

Namco at E3

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else catch the Namco Pac-man birthday floor show at E3? Six stripper-esque (esque, since they don't actually strip,) dancers singing "happy birthday to you" to a guy in a pacman suit, as the crowd (somewhat) sings along.

Surreal didn't even begin to describe...

Re:Namco at E3

[Teddy Beartuzzi]

Pac porn? Cool.

Re:Namco at E3

[frankvl]

Surreal didn't even begin to describe...

It would be surreal if he were actually eaten by ghosts

Re:Namco at E3

[Metaphorically]

I have piles of pictures from E3 2005. Right now you can get to them from my blog. I haven't put up the Namco ones yet, but I will soon.

I got some booth babes, not sure about Namco - I was too busy yelling for a t-shirt. Namco had some guys with pac-man heads on, looked hilarious, I got a picture of them.

Most of the pictures I took are screenshots, tho.

I think the Namco women were the same ones as last year, the leader of the pac looked familiar.

Re:Namco at E3

[Anonymous Coward]

omg there is a video game version of CS Lewis' chronicles of narnia. That is seriously creepy.

Re:Namco at E3

[Metaphorically]

What's creepy is that the game (and I'm guessing by extension the movie that goes with it) doesn't seem to have anything to do with the story in the original books.

come on namco, sort it out

[maharg]

hopefully namco will come to their senses soon

This isn't a real story

[Anonymous Coward]

The mods were just looking for a reason to use the Pac-Man icon again.

Pac-Man had level interludes

[Riktov]

The original Pac-Man had level interludes too. The first was after the second round, when Pac-man came out from the left chased by a ghost, then came back giant-sized chasing the ghost. Then the next one where the red monster got stuck on a pin an its "hood" got ripped a bit. And so on....

Waiwai

[Konster]

Gotta love the Waiwai section of that site.

Re:Waiwai

[KDR_11k]

Thank you for pointing that out, haven't seen such hilarious stories for quite some time.

Re:Waiwai

[Anonymous Coward]

True story: Those are all fake, written up by the British tabloid reporters that are employed by the paper (the same ones who do the English translations of their other stories).

The record

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the actual record?

Re:The record

[krunk4ever]

i'm guessing the # of arcade units sold in 8 years: 293,000

Re:The record

[elmarkitse]

The article is vauge...it's either the subjective "pac man is recoginzed as the number one arcade game" or the "most units shipped." Here the only relevant part of the article...but again, it doesn't say by what means the award is being given.

Namco's popular "Pac Man" has been recognized as the world's No. 1 arcade game, paving the way for it to be included in the Guinness Book of Records, it has been learned.

A total of 293,000 Pac Man arcade machines were sold across the world in the eight years after the game was released in 1980.

Whats missing from this article is the part that actually says which of the many interesting facts the article brings up (perhaps pac man is in the record books because it was the first arcade character inspired by a fast food item) so we're left to guess.

A quick google news search for Guinness and pacman come up with nothing, either.

Re:The record

[Voxus]

Guess you'll have to buy the book, or maybe wait for it to show up on the Guinness website...

Re:The record

[Anonymous Coward]

> Guess you'll have to buy the book,

Buy, you say?? Buy?? I want OpenRecords.

Now how could we start it off? How about Operating System with the most number of bugs ...

Guinness Book of Records sold out long ago

[bazmail]

I stopped buying that book ever since i saw highly dubious catagories creeping in like "The shortest instruction manual for a computer" which was "awarded" to the iMac a few years ago.
An obvious advertisemsent.

Re:Guinness Book of Records sold out long ago

[hairykrishna]

I never knew about this. My company makes a fair few white box machines for customers- how about I print an instruction leaflet that just says "Plug it in". Do I beat the iMac?

Re:Guinness Book of Records sold out long ago

[binner1]

Until your competition copies your manual but assigns the intern to proofing it: Plug i in

Sorry, the record now belongs to the guy that ignored the red squiggly underline in Word.

-Ben

Re:Guinness Book of Records sold out long ago

[bazmail]

Yeah but there are some mouth-breathers out there who won't understand that you actually have to switch it on. I like the way you think though.

Re:Guinness Book of Records sold out long ago

[Elshar]

There's lots of appliances (network, storage, etc) that don't actually have on/off/reset switches. They just turn on when you plug them in. No need to switch it on. :)

Re:Guinness Book of Records sold out long ago

[bazmail]

yeah i know. I married one. heh!

Been playing for nearly 25 years!

[Riktov]

I probably played Pac-Man before anyone else on Slashdot. It was September or October 1980, and I was a high school student living in Japan. My friends and I would go to a video arcade (or "game center" as they were called) in Jiyugaoka after school, and one day we came across this strange game with a cute yellow guy going around munching dots in a maze, completely unlike the Galaxian and other space-themed games we had been playing until then.

It really was revolutionary, and we were all instantly hooked. I can still play the pattern that my friend taught me then.

The video arcade where I first played Pac-Man 25 years ago is still there, incidentally.

Re:Been playing for nearly 25 years!

[torpor]

The video arcade where I first played Pac-Man 25 years ago is still there, incidentally.

thats pretty cool.. on my infrequent trips back home in the last 25 years, i often look for the old gamer spots, but alas the city has moved on .. though i did one time see a Galaxian t-shirt in the window of the 'fashion shop' that once was a chips&coke deli i spent far too many hot afternoons in, shooting along ..

seems so weird to me now, spotting the cultural cue's and echo's of those games, resonating out into the world, now, for 25 years ..

off to play a little QIX on the all-in-one'r, which i'm sure will follow me into the retirement home/old-persons dwelling-shanty, heh heh ..

Re: Been playing for nearly 25 years!

[Alwin Henseler]

It really was revolutionary, and we were all instantly hooked.

Came across some webpages recently on Pac-Man history. Apparantly it was inspired by a left-over pizza (with a slice cut out), and after introduction so popular in Japan, that there was a shortage in particular coins, because so many were thrown in the Pac-Man arcade machines(!!).

Personally, I think Pac-Man is so wonderful because it combines a deceivingly simple concept with addictive gameplay. Think about programming YAPMC (Yet Another Pac-Man Clone): at first sight, you think: simple. But you have to deal with timing, player controls, graphics/sprites etc., sounds, the game 'map' (pills, walls, powerups etc.), and even 'Artificial Intelligence' (ghost movement, yeah I know they're really dumb, but still). All the basic ingredients of modern games, except 3D or networked multiplayer. And that in a really small package, where any kid can grasp the object of the game in under 5 seconds.

Re: Been playing for nearly 25 years!

[Dun Malg]

Think about programming YAPMC (Yet Another Pac-Man Clone): at first sight, you think: simple. But you have to deal with timing, player controls, graphics/sprites etc., sounds, the game 'map' (pills, walls, powerups etc.), and even 'Artificial Intelligence' (ghost movement, yeah I know they're really dumb, but still).

Have you never programmed a game before? All of that stuff is simple. I could knock off YAPMC in about 2 days. The part that's not trivial is doing it 25 years ago, in assembly language, within the limits of the hardware in those days.

Re:Been playing for nearly 25 years!

[Orangedog_on_crack]

There is a reason why these old games still have such a loyal following. With all of the bells and whistles the new games have, the gagillion polygon z-axis texture mapping ju-ju, they lack something that the old games had in spades....a soul. Sure, the new games are pretty. So was my ex-wife at one time. Both are severely lacking in the soul department.

Re: Been playing for nearly 25 years!

[Kaki Nix Sain]

I've a friend at the Guildhall gamemaking school. The people in his class each put together YAPMC as a final test. I think they had a day to do it.

His turned into an amusing political satire.

Worst Port

[Adrilla]

Did they also award the Atari 2600 version as "Worst arcade to home console conversion ever!"?

Re:Worst Port

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right, the 2600 version didn't even have the cherries and other fruits, they just had a light brown square surrounded by a dark brown square, and didn't move but stayed in the same place on the screen. Horrible. My brothers and I called it the vitamin, or a "chocolate bonkers".

Re:Worst Port

[Guppy06]

"and didn't move but stayed in the same place on the screen. Horrible.."

Lay off the Ms. for a while and try the original for a change. That's how fruit behaved in the original game.

Re:Worst Port

[Guppy06]

Gauntlet for the NES?

Game needs more players, badly!

This is anti-climatic.

[Anonymous Coward]

The simple reason that Pac Man is bigger, more widely known and will be remembered longer than the Guinness World Book of Records gives the truth to this misnomer of recognition.

Now when Pac Man recognises Guiness I'll be impressed.

A Paradigm

[thomble]

Pac-Man almost laid the foundations for the video games we now know and love.

If only Ms. Pac-Man hadn't seduced him, domesticated him, and consequently told him to empty the trash, run to the supermarket to pick up cherries, strawberries and peaches, and gotten hooked on Power Pills, perhaps the kids these days wouldn't be so cluelessly hooked on Halo.

Play a Java version of the classic

[oranda]

Play a Java version of the classic:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pacdasher

Re:Play a Java version of the classic

[Anonymous Coward]

Play the excel version! http://www.geocities.jp/nchikada/pac/

Re:Play a Java version of the classic

[cyrax256]

Play teh Excel version of the classic ;)

http://www.google.com.ar/url?sa=U&start=1&q=http:/ /www.geocities.jp/nchikada/pac/&e=9707

Re:Play a Java version of the classic

[Anonymous Coward]

What's with the google URL?

The shortest instruction manual for a computer

[TapeCutter]

I agree, everyone knows that the shortest instruction manual is "Don't panic."

Alternative history.

[Anonymous Coward]

Obvious but manditory (and not entirely safe for work) link to the VG Cats History Of Pac-Man...

Well, I giggled.

Re:Alternative history.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do you, and the other AC who reposted this link, live?

I want to end your lives. Right after "Scott Ramsoomair."

Pac-Man, Pac-Man everywhere

[Mikito]

Wasn't Baby Pac-Man a strange hybrid where the bottom part of the game was a conventional pinball machine, but if you got the ball into a certain spot, you could play a video game which was at the top (headboard?) next to the score counter?

I think that if you got caught in the video part, the ball would be ejected back into the pinball portion of the game.

I haven't thought about that game for years.

I also remember a more 3-D version of Pac-Man, which might have been the Super Pac-Man that you mention.

There was also a short-lived cartoon version of Pac-Man, but I don't remember much about it.

Re:Pac-Man, Pac-Man everywhere

[antdude]

Yep for Baby Pac-Man. Nope for Super Pac-Man. You can get the Visual Pinball version (screen shot). See here for details. Remember, Super Pac-Man lets you eat power ups that made you BIG!

I do remember the cartoon series. Cereal too! Halloween costume! Man, I was so obsessed with Pacman as a kid.

"Pac-Man Makes Guinness Book"

[torpor]

hmm.. lets see:

1. ".. turns beer into something to reed?" ermm. not good.
2. ".. of Wankey Records?" yay! what issue?
3. ".. I'm too stoned and I can't type "of World Records" into this field any more ..
4. ".. the field is too short.. THE FIELD IS TOO SHORT? wtF?!!!"

hrm, okay, never mind. sorry about the shouting.

DOH!

[antdude]

I messed up my post! It's way too late. :(

Here for Super Pac-man information.

Also it was the first...

[Anonymous Coward]

First Person Chewer.

Here Comes Pac-Man

[Yorrike]

Aw shit, here comes Pac-Man.
Hey Pac-Man, what's up?
Me you bitches! I'm high on crack! Wanna freebase?
No Pac-Man drugs are bad!
Nope can't help you man.
Pussies! Whoa! Holy shit!

Re:Here Comes Pac-Man

[danbond_98]

Whoever modded this troll, it's the lyrics from a song by The Bloodhound Gang, not just the useless trash it might at first appear to be.

Re:Here Comes Pac-Man

[mickyflynn]

all your freebase are belong to us. make your time.

He got in the Guiness BOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was for the number of pills munched.

Re:He got in the Guiness BOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Keith Richards has that record.

CDs of video game sounds/music?

[dpbsmith]

Does anyone know of CD or recording that collects all the most familiar music and sounds of the greatest video games? It would seem as if it's about time to do this, since a lot of the old consoles are still functioning in collections, so it's probably POSSIBLE to get a recording of a functioning Pac-Man or Space Invaders game even today...

(Come to think of it, I'd gladly buy a recording of the sounds made by an IBM 407 accounting machine...)

Re:CDs of video game sounds/music?

[Anonymous Coward]

Game music database

Re:CDs of video game sounds/music?

[johnpaul191]

you can also sometimes find midi clips to be used as ring tones. i found a few a while back and can not remember where (a random site of ring tones had them jumbled in). the only one i could find again is the start up audio from Dig Dug. that's my text message alert.

you can probably also track down the audio because people download and play the mame files, and if i remember right you can get the audio from them. it's not a compilation CD, but it would be the actual audio files.

Re:CDs of video game sounds/music?

[Zanthrox]

Not exactly what you're looking for, but you might check out the minibosses. (http://minibosses.com/) They're a band that plays old video game soundtracks..quite amusing, actually.

Re:CDs of video game sounds/music?

[hexi]

Kohina.com

It has a lot of really good stuff. Okay it hurts your head at times, but anyway gives a good retro fealing :)

Re:CDs of video game sounds/music?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't find it now but there is an "arcade ambience" project that reproduces the general sound of an arcade at various points in the 1980s.

Disgusting

[Anonymous Coward]

And here's the true story behind Ms. PacMan. Disgusting, isn't it?

wtf

[Anonymous Coward]

the site this guiness book link is from seems to be a joke site, or are things really that bizarre in japan? and scant on details...

Photos/Videos?

[antdude]

Any photographs or video clips of this? :)

What sort of news site is that?

[MentalMooMan]

I'm slightly concerned about the person who sent in this article. Look at the sort of news site they visit. Just look at the other news on there!
'Pimp of elementary schoolgirls arrested',
'Teacher sacked for molesting schoolgirl', and
'Teachers targeted in Shizuoka sex harassment scam'.
Seems a little dodgey to me...

Re:What sort of news site is that?

[Maserati]

News ? I though they were selling DVDs !

Re:What sort of news site is that?

[nunchux]

Actually, it's one of Japan's leading newspapers... And the stories are pretty routine. Unfortunately molestation and worse of underage girls is pretty rampant in Japanese society.

What record did Mr. Man set?

[noidentity]

I guess Pac Man can confidently claim the record of eating the most power pellets.

And lest we forget

[screwballicus]

There are a few of us odd ones who primarily experienced Pac Man not as Pac Man at all, but as the TI 99/4A clone Munchman.

Munchman switches things around by having Munchman leave a trail instead of eating dots.

Re:And lest we forget

[Anonymous Coward]

I loved Munchman. Didn't know about the cheat codes until just now. Some 23 years too late.

Re:And lest we forget

[Mikito]

I'm not even going to ask what Munchman leaves a trail of...

Strange big hit levels

[AndroidCat]

Namco officials said video arcade games were considered a big hit if the number of arcade machines reached about 1,000.

I don't think that 1,000 was a very big number for the industry at the time, even if they were selling whole machines and not just board/graphics kits. Of course, 1,000 might have been a big number before Pac-Man...

Yep :)

[BitterAndDrunk]

The interludes happened when the board layout changed, every 4 levels.

First was Pac Man and Ms Pac Man meeting (they run across different parts of the screen chased by ghosts, then coming from opposite sides of the screen, they dodge the ghosts by moving up. Ghosts bump into each other, a little heart appears) I forget what the act was titled.

The second was titled "The Chase" and it was right after the pretzel level IIRC.

The third act (which was hard as hell to get to at my young age) was Junior - where the stork drops off a baby pac man. These levels were hard as hell, mostly because the exits to get to the other side of the map were death traps. (they were long corridors that were dangerous as heck, even with the ghosts being afraid of the dark)

other history notes...you mean Puck Man?

[PeterCook]

Originally called Puck Man in Japan and then changed for fear that young video game players in the US would alter the P into a F - look it up in Wikipedia. Also let us not forget the promotional song from Buckner and Garcia - "Pac Man Fever" that hit the airwaves briefly. You can still find that song and the other B&G video games tunes if you google them.

Re:other history notes...you mean Puck Man?

[surgeon]

It is Puck man, see my friends site www.puckman.org for reference

Re:other history notes...you mean Puck Man?

[niktemadur]

I don't see the need to change the name, as Puck could be some sort of hockey reference, what with the main character eating pucks up and down the maze.

A couple of years back, there was a new guy at work who, when in idle mode, just stood there staring at some point beyond a speck in the wall, with his mouth hanging open. It took co-workers all of one day to coin the guy a nickname: you guessed it, Pac-Man.

Re:other history notes...you mean Puck Man?

[Anonymous Coward]

Originally called Puck Man in Japan

Well... originally called "Pakkuman" in Japan, of which "Puck Man" was one possible romanisation that they considered and rejected for the US release. I doubt anyone ever spoke the phrase. He was named for his big mouth (Japanese onomatopoeia "pakupaku" for eating), not for his resemblance to a hockey puck.

Pac-Man even shaped life as we know it

[NeedleSurfer]

I mean, I for one was once running in the dark eating pills and listening to repetitive music...

Re:Pac-Man even shaped life as we know it

[tomstdenis]

... um Pac-Man only had intro music. During the game it was that whistle sound + pill eating sound...

Tom

Re:Pac-Man even shaped life as we know it

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, that was funny when I heard a commedian say it the first time.

Pac-man cartoon

[Gary Destruction]

I remember back in the 80's there was even a Pac-man cartoon. In the cartoon pac-man had a pac-dog and a wife. The head bad guy was the ghosts' boss. He looked kind of like Darth Vader.

Re:Pac-man cartoon

[Anonymous Coward]

This still runs on Boomerang, the vintage cartoon outlet from Cartoon Network. It's on many digital cable systems, unsure about it's presence on dish or DirecTV.

Namco still sells new Pac-Man cabinets

[Beebos]

Well, almost. Actually its a Ms. Pac-Man and Galga combo cabinet. BUT, you can play Pac-Man after pressing start by moving the joystick up,up, up, down, down, down, left, right, left, right. left

Pac man is not in Guinness world records

[loupgarou21]

I just tried several different searches at the Guinness world records website and can't find a single reference to Pac man.

According to their website , the worlds best selling video game is Super Mario Brothers with 40.23 million copies sold worldwide, the best selling handheld video game is the Game Boy with 100 million units sold.

A quick note however, their website only sports 40,000 records, so their is a chance that it is in the full book.

Re:Pac man is not in Guinness world records

[freeweed]

According to their website , the worlds best selling video game is Super Mario Brothers with 40.23 million copies sold worldwide

That's for the NES cartridge version. 40+ million arcade cabinets and you'd have one in every retail outlet on the planet, practically.

Odd though - I would have sworn that Ms. Pac-man outsold Pac-man in the day. There sure seems to be a lot more of the Ms. cabinets still left.

Re:Pac man is not in Guinness world records

[tsadi]

From the linked article, Pac man is recognized as the world's No. 1 arcade game, while Mario is world's best selling.

HIT Entertainment acquired Guinness World Records(

[xtermin8]

August 30 2002: HIT announces its acquisition of Gullane Entertainment which brings to the HIT fold classic children's brands Thomas and Friends(TM), Guinness World Records(TM) http://www.hitentertainment.biz/hit/cp/milestones. jsp Yep, they sold out.

Pac Man songs

[cjellibebi]

> Also let us not forget the promotional song from Buckner and Garcia - "Pac Man Fever" that hit the airwaves briefly.

Aphex Twin, in the guise of Power Pill, recorded Pac-Man. Although this was recorded many years after the B&G "Pac Man Fever", the Aphex Twin version sounds more Pac-Man like than the B&G version (the style of the music integrates better with the pacman sounds). AE.

Pac-Man Fever

[Lord Kano]

I got a pocket full of quarters and I'm headed for the arcade!

I used to have that song on a 45 rpm.

LK

Where is the Guiness Record for Super Mario Bros 3

[Zangief]

Because is the most sold game ever. Not restrictions like "most sold console game", "most sold pc game", "fastest selling xbox game (halo 2)", but the absolutely best seller in video games.

Super Mario Bros 3 deserves it!

Golden Tee..... ?

[HomerJ]

If someone could either correct me or find the article I remember reading it in, but didn't Golden Tee become the #1 arcade game of all time (in units sold) like last year?

Re:Golden Tee..... ?

[gozar]

If someone could either correct me or find the article I remember reading it in, but didn't Golden Tee become the #1 arcade game of all time (in units sold) like last year?

This article brings up only 50,000 units sold.

Pac LXIX

[Anonymous Coward]

Pac porn? I'd guess it would be very orally-focused. Ms. Pac Man eats Mr. Pac Man, who in turn is eating a ghost....

It's unclear what gender the ghosts are, so I'm not sure who this would appeal to.

I'm not even sure that PacMen and girls have any genitalia... but I'm sure that hasn't stopped some bizarre furry.... er, smoothie fetishist thinking about it.

Hmmm. That stinks.

[munpfazy]

How can someone write an article that says something has won an award. . . and then leave out which award has been received?

here is a UPI version with almost identical text, but which makes it clear (well, precise - clear isn't possible in this case) what they've won: "the No. 1 arcade game of all time."

That is, of course, assuming it's the first story that mangled the press release, and not the second story that made a guess at trying to fill in the obvious missing information.

Now all we need to figure out is what the heck being the No. 1 arcade game of all time actually means.

I'm guessing it means very, very little.

Guinness has become sad indeed

[base_chakra]

I stopped buying that book ever since i saw highly dubious catagories creeping in like "The shortest instruction manual for a computer" which was "awarded" to the iMac a few years ago.

I couldn't agree more. What's worse, such fluff seems to have displaced some legitimate entries. I recently browsed through the 2005 edition, and was dismayed to find the paltry two-page Games section filled with such inspirational entries as "Best-selling Playstation2 game"; meanwhile, high scores for classic coin-ops were (as far as I could tell) nowhere to be found.

The new Guinness Book is rife with questionable entries, but to me the most disturbing is "Most Accurate Bomb". I recognize the targeting mechanism as an engineering feat, but is such a weapon really something we want to laud as a human triumph? (And what are we really celebrating here: a reduction in collateral damage, or our enhanced ability to kill and intimidate effectively?)

The Pac Man Fever Song List

[PeterCook]

A while back I bought the Pac Man Fever CD from mpe.com - has a lot of oldy moldy arcade songs from B&G: Pac Man Fever, Froggy's Lament, Ode To Centipede, Do The Donkey Kong, Hyperspace, The Defender, Mousetrap and Goin' Berzerk.

NOT offtopic.

[game kid]

Namco is making records, while refusing to recognize fan-made games as an aid to their business and not theft.

Neave ought to re-release Pac-Man, along with Dig Dug and all five (or so) Tekkens, and yank those money-hungry bastards^W^W^W record-makers out of business.

Whaddaya expect?

[game kid]

Even partially-eaten pizza pies need to get some, uh, affection. After 25 years, he deserves it.

That Pac-Man's a yellow pill-popping playboy, I tell ya.

Pac Mac likes Stout Beer?

[g-san]

Did anyone else think the article was about a book on a fine Irish Stout? Now there's a game. The more pellets you eat the more wonky the controls get. I mean, seriously, if there was a gum that tasted like Irish Car Bombs* I would buy it by the case.

* Irish Car Bomb
Fill a shot glass 1/2 Irish Whiskey, 1/2 Irish Cream, then drop into a 3/4 full glass of Guiness (the beer not the book) and drinkrealfast. Repeat at most 3 times in one evening, or 5 if not drinking anything else.

Second person chewer

[Mikito]

An example of a second person chewer:

In Soviet Russia, Pac-Man eats you!

pacman online

[matlu]

well you don't need to own an arcade machine to play pacman, play it online: http://www.duelboard.com/