Slashdot Mirror
A Playable PAC-MAN On Google Doodle
Kilrah_il and several other readers made sure we noted Google's tribute to PAC-MAN on its 30th anniversary — a playable game implemented in JavaScript. "'To play the game, go to google.com during the next 48 hours (because it's too cool to keep for just one day) and either press the "Insert Coin" button or just wait for a few seconds.' There is also an Easter egg for those who want to recall one of the first multi-player games, but you'll have to RTFA to find it." This doodle may overshadow the Official PAC-MAN 30th Anniversary Destination.
I saw this earlier this morning. Obviously, productivity around the globe dropped 30% today.
The point is the celebration of a load bearing pillar in gaming history, not the fact that JavaScript was used to do it.
Living With a Nerd
What is it advertising? Nothing, other than perhaps Google. It does, however, let people who have games blocked on a school/corporate network play a game or two of Pac Man.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Exactly. How many people knew Pacman was 30 years old today? Probably not a lot. How many people know about Pacman? Quite a few. It's a fun gesture to educate people how much things have changed, bringing back the nostalgic feeling of playing the game while showing how far we've come, with web searches and the internet in general. I think it spurs some reflection on the subject matter, but thats just my experience.
You know, I thought that at first - I had a frantic co-worker at my desk asking "why is my computer making pac-man noises!" this morning (it had loaded up and started playing in the background).
Then I went over to her desk, looked around for a little bit, figured out it was the Google banner, ate a couple of ghosts, and it was fine.
Seriously, we all need to learn to laugh a bit more. You can't be all srs bizness all the time, a silly little temporary Google banner will not kill you.
And this is why you should keep Javascript disabled, if not at all times, at least at work.
+1 Anal Retentive.
In all seriousness, you have the sound enabled on your PC in a professional environment?
You know you can configure your search bar to use Google in *whatever* browser you're using, right? So you don't have to go to Google's home page? I can't remember the last time I typed "www.google.com" into my url bar (before today, when I heard there was something strange in the neighborhood).
What do you think, sirs?
no one gives a fuck about people who are that stupid.
Seriously, watch them abandon google
oh wait, they won't.
Google should do this more often.
I simply can't believe we've come this far and we STILL don't have a mute button as a standard item on web browsers. By Lucifer's beard!
It is the 30th anniversary of a game that was huge during the most formative years of the average google employee (and most likely the average /. users). I think we can all let it slide for 2 days.
The kicker is there's even a kill screen after stage 255. That's some serious dedication right there.
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
Save Complete Page in Firefox doesn't get even close to all the pieces. This must be preserved, to be played every year on May 21st. Is there a save Addon that can get it all automatically or do I have to spelunk in my cache?
...And yet it's still very likely cooler than anything you've ever accomplished.
Seriously, I'm sure that the engineers at Google had about 2,741,288 more productive things they could have been doing than this, but they did it anyway because it was fun. It was probably some guy that that churned it out in his spare time. It sure is easy to cast stones at other people's endeavors from your comfortable armchair, isn't it? Tell you what, get off your butt and do something you think is neat in your spare time, let us pick it apart for being "meh" compared to professionally developed products, and then we'll see if you are so quick to criticize again.