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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.
Insert coin twice to enable multiplayer.
One player is controlled via arrow keys, the other by wasd.
If you have a friend on hand (or some serious ambidextrous skills....) click "Inser Coin" twice and use the WASD keys to control MsPacman!
"...So I hung back and lurked. For 18 months. Can't beat a good old-fashioned lurking."
I'm holding out for Q-Bert.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
I saw this earlier this morning. Obviously, productivity around the globe dropped 30% today.
Google handled approx 88 billion searches in Dec-2009. (88b/31)*2=5.67billion searches in two days. If (conservativly) one tenth of those are work related, that's 567m. If one in ten work related users plays this once for 60 seconds, that's 3.4 billion seconds. 3.4 billion seconds is approximatly 108 person-years worth of productivity. (Which at US federal minimum wage is about 1.6 million dollars). That's a low figure as those who need google to work probably don't earn minimum wage. Now that's power! I personally played for more than 60s....
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
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
It isn't a banner ad - it isn't advertising a thing.
I bet that most people will say this is the most awesome thing Google has done all year.
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.
Yes, it works on iPhone. Not very well, mind you, but it is controllable with swipes.
Have a Nice Day, Adobe!
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
Noticed it at work this morning.
Told a few people.
Poster should note that there is SOUND!
Sporadically every now and then I hear Pac-Man going on a few cubes away. lol.
Mute your sound before going to Google if your in an Office setting... Unless they are cool enough to let you play video games at work. My bosses are a bit sticky about that.
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?
It's not entirely done in JavaScript - they have an off-screen Flash applet that handles the sound.
Having an "alarm sound" in google home page is not that wise decision, I got reports about people calling helpdesk tech support in order to report an "alarm sound", "its a virus?", "hijacked google home page, please run anti-spyware", etc, etc
Is PacMan that important to the general public? I agree is /. material, but for non-tech people I dont think it matters...
Get my e-mail after a captcha test in: http://tinymailt
They have a bug in the Pacman game.
If you try to do a Google search in the search bar after you're done playing the game, the WASD keys don't work. Even after you do the search from the first page, and the first page of results shows up, you still can't use those keys.
I'm betting that "pcmn" is going to be one of today's hottest Google trends.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
This is the most awesome thing Google has done all year!
Where are my mod points when I need them...
It's also the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back today.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
You can hear your staff playing video games while you post on Slashdot? But I thought 3DRealms folded?
And I want to run a game programmed in Javascript on my computer WHY? I helped write a simulator for a PDP-10 that ran on a PDP-11 (36 bit machine on a 16 bit machine) 30+ years ago. And there was a concrete corporate need for it (we were modifying the Bliss-11 compiler which was written in Bliss-10). And even though I like PacMan (lord knows how many quarters I plugged into it at the local video game parlors in the 80's) I would still pause before I open my machine(s) up to running Javascript games.
If only from the simple perspective that an interpreted, garbage collected language (such as Javascript) is inherently less efficient than a compiled language (C, Pascal, whatever) -- and it therefore is going to burn more CPU cycles than are required to perform the functionality the game provides. AND IT IS THEREFORE NOT GREEN!
The goal of programmers (world-wide) should not be on "how do I implement something clever and cool". It should instead be on how do I reduce the CO2 footprint of my program? It is a sad state when one is promoting programs which may increase wasteful expenditure of energy (via Javascript). If /. is a "good" forum, should they not be promoting good directions?
I have already received a technical support call regarding this.
"Help my computer is making alarm sounds I think something broke! Here listen to this! *holds phone to computer speaker*"
*facepalm*
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.
One lingering questions about this: Did Google have to get permission from copyright holders to make this game? I'm assuming that it would be a no-brainer to let google create this game, because anyone with a financial interest in the game would certainly welcome a free ad of this magnitude, but what are the rights of Namco, et. al. regarding this now 30 year old game? Do they still "own" the game-proper? What about the soundtrack?
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.
No kidding. I have headphones plugged in always, even when I'm not using them. That way when I click on a troll link, I'm the only one that will hear, "Hey, everybody! I'm looking at gay porno!"
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
In that case, it is a shame they did not do the sounds using HTML5. It would be nice to a reworked version using HTML Audio.
I've been told HTML5's <audio> has five deficiencies:
I could be wrong; feel free to post links to web sites demonstrating how to overcome these deficiencies.
DAMN GOOGLE! now I have a quarter crammed into my LCD.
If you can't be silly while posting to Slashdot from work, when can you be silly?
I've been a programmer for a few years but within the last 8 months have been working on a project using Javascript.
I've been struggling with forms and trees and autocompletes and getting the css to look the same across all browsers and then I see that.
I'm amazed at what they were able to do in Javascript...if I had 1/10th of that skill I'd be done with my project by now.
Clearly it's time for me to put in an application at McDonald's...
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?
While playing pacman at work
...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.