Pac-Man in a Strange New World

Posted on September 13, 2006

Pac-Man celebrated his 25th birthday earlier this year. Now, he is out in a new game called Pac-Man World 3 from Namco. The game features Pac-Man in a strange new world. Players can even control the ghosts if they want to. CBC.ca has a great article about the history behind Pac-Man. The article is called, "The Beautiful Game."

The article discusses some of the many tie-ins and power of Pac-Man during the 1980s. Pac-Man was everywhere. The game was created by Namco designer Toru Iwatani who was inspired by a slice of pizza.

In the early 1980s, Pac-Man was a phenomenon without parallel. There was the Pac-Man TV show, a Pac-Man song; Pac-Man even appeared on the front cover of Time magazine as a metaphor for crooked politicians and their tendency to gobble cash and resources. He was a pop-culture sensation that could only have occurred at the dawn of the blockbuster era, a time when the George Lucasian sheen of hype and marketing started to eclipse content. The rise of movie sequels like Return of the Jedi and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and MTV-ready bands like Duran Duran proved that pop culture events were increasingly the result of strategic planning rather than genuine, spontaneous public interest. Pac-Man, on the other hand, just happened. He munched his way into this new universe with shocking voracity. He became the icon of a brand new age. There will never be another videogame with such sweeping influence.

The article is worth visiting just to see the picture of the Time magazine cover from October 25th, 1982 that features Pac-Man on the cover. We like Pac-Man whether he is a new virtual world or running through a college library.

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