If you visit Google today you are greeted by the standard Google doodle. Today it represents the 30th anniversary of Pack Man
As usual Google has chosen to use, it’s logo to honor what could be considered one of the biggest games of all times. However, this time there is a twist. If you stay in the page long enough and click around. The doodle comes alive allowing you to control the pacman and play the game with the original sounds and all.
The interactive doodle — a first for Google — is the brainchild of senior user experience designer Marcin Wichary, whose earliest exposure to Pac-Man came at age five while traveling across his native Poland with his father, a game technician, to repair arcade machines. Wichary worked with Google doodler (yes, it’s a real job) Ryan Germick to create the finished design. more…
This right here, is why I love Google!
Update: Google has just posted an entry on their blog about the pacman game and its significance.
When I was growing up, my dad had the best job I could possibly imagine: he was an arcade game and pinball technician. For me, that meant summer trips through Poland’s coastal cities with their seasonal arcade parlors; peeking inside cabinets to learn programming and engineering secrets; and—of course—free games!
One of my favorites was PAC-MAN, whose popularity transcended the geopolitical barriers of that time. During the heyday of space shooters, Tōru Iwatani’s creation stood out as one of the first video games aimed at a broader audience, with a cute story of pizza-shaped character gobbling dots in a maze, colorful (literally!) characters, friendly design, very little violence and everlasting fun.
Today, on PAC-MAN’s 30th birthday, you can rediscover some of your 8-bit memories—or meet PAC-MAN for the first time—through our first-ever playable Google doodle. 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.
Google doodler Ryan Germick and I made sure to include PAC-MAN’s original game logic, graphics and sounds, bring back ghosts’ individual personalities, and even recreate original bugs from this 1980’s masterpiece. We also added a little easter egg: if you throw in another coin, Ms. PAC-MAN joins the party and you can play together with someone else (PAC-MAN is controlled with arrow keys or by clicking on the maze, Ms. PAC-MAN using the WASD keys).
any clues how to download and keep? i don’t want to live in a world where this only lasts 48 hours!
well played google, well played.
I have the JS code that generates the game but they obfuscated a LOT of it.
me too, there’s a lot of flash it links to but , like you say, obfuscated. i guess we’ll have to wait and see how it’s archived on the google doodle page