A Playable PAC-MAN On Google Doodle

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A Playable PAC-MAN On Google Doodle

Posted by kdawson on Friday May 21, 2010 @04:25AM from the game-will-never-be-over-not-really dept.

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.

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Productivity by iPhr0stByt3 · 2010-05-21 04:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

I saw this earlier this morning. Obviously, productivity around the globe dropped 30% today.
Re:How is this impressive in any way? by Pojut · 2010-05-21 04:35 · Score: 5, Insightful

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
Re:So... by IICV · 2010-05-21 04:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.
Re:So... by celibate+for+life · 2010-05-21 04:48 · Score: 4, Insightful

And this is why you should keep Javascript disabled, if not at all times, at least at work.
Re:So... by CaseM · 2010-05-21 04:48 · Score: 5, Insightful

+1 Anal Retentive.
In all seriousness, you have the sound enabled on your PC in a professional environment?
Re:So... by DarrenBaker · 2010-05-21 05:08 · Score: 5, Insightful

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!
Re:So... by Wovel · 2010-05-21 05:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.
...And yet it's still cooler by KingSkippus · 2010-05-21 07:06 · Score: 4, Insightful

You're not missing much. This is a poor clone of the game. It LOOKS good but plays horrible (compared to the arcade original). The ghosts are stupid (run in circles instead of after you), the maze has tunnels that don't match up creating dead ends, and the ghosts stay blue forever. I didn't think it possible but it appears somebody programmed a worse game than Atari Pac-Man (which looks crap but is fun to play)
...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.