Pac-Man As Pot Head

1up.com has a look at the history of drugs in games, from the pellet-popping days of Pac-Man to the industrious sales efforts of the GTA games. From the article: "As games drew a wider audience, not to mention a wider variety of creative talents (some pretty weird stuff reportedly went on at the Atari offices in an evening), they necessarily drew on a wider spectrum of influences and inspirations...some of them chemical in nature. There have been games that were probably made on drugs -- Rez springs to mind, or the Virtual Light Machine -- and even reviewed on drugs, when A.C. Styles dosed the office coffee pot at Die Hard Game Fan."

Comments

Interesting but not surprising...

[Oldest European]

Not a surprise if you think about it, or is there any relevant social group where there are no drug users?

And sadly enough art and drug (ab)use almost always were related.

You miss the lichen.

[N3Roaster]

Hallucinogens weren't the only thing to make Nethack great. It's nice how you can die from eating too much:

This lembas wafer is delicious!
You're having a hard time getting all of it down.
Stop eating? [yn] (y)
You choke over your food.
You die...
Do you want your possessions identified? [ynq]

I love the attention to detail on little things like that. BTW, has there ever been a count of how many distinct ways to die in Nethack there are?

Manic Miner

[StonedRat]

Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy were obviously created while under the influence. I heard that Matt Smith (the creator) became a bit of a druggy after that, but is apprently doing ok for himself now with manic miner being licenced for mobile phones and the GBA. From the pics I've seen of him, the drugs have surely left their mark.

Drawing on personal experiance

[FidelCatsro]

Ok it is insanely hard to code even when your just a little stoned.
Imagine trying to code a game when your tripping. I mean wooh dude Heavy number shittt man.
Recounting one time i was on acid , i completely forgot all about numbers and created some complex system involving blips of and the position of Christmas tree lights, This is not a rare incident , one time i turned a manual for the game 1080 snowboarding into the nix nax nox tobo , a religious book to live you life by , the devil being a tree outside and god being IIRC my light bulb.
Making a game whilst on drugs is really really hard if not nearly impossible .Perhaps you could draw quite well on past experiences ,but whilst actually on anything it would not be a good idea unless you like code so obsfucated that it makes badly written perl look like the nirvana of code.
Perhaps it would be easier if your on a little amphetamines , but anything hallucinogenic is asking for trouble. ;) unless your the graphics artist or story writer then they are all permanently wasted anyway,
Not to mention the Voice over director who in most game pretty much has to have been smoking to Cheech and Chong levels