Happy Birthday Pac-Man!
- Image via Wikipedia
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that Pac-Man came out the same month I was born. Pac-Man (and Ms. Pac-Man) were the first games that my chubby little toddler hands ever spent a significant amount of time playing, and I continued to play the different versions of the game over the years as I grew up. There weren’t many arcades in my area, but there was a Pac-Man table at one of the restaurants my family frequented, and I remember sitting there asking for one more quarter…just one more of whatever adult I was with. I had Pac-Man on my Commodore 64, I had it on the Atari that I inherited from my uncle.
Pac-Man was my gateway, the first game that led to a lifetime obsession with video games.
And, just as I did a few weeks ago, Pac-Man is celebrating its 30th Anniversary today. You can go over to Google‘s main page for a google logo-ized playable version of the game, but there are plenty of other versions out there too.
In fact, if there’s an 80′s game you’re feeling nostalgic for, you can probably find either a flash or java version of it out there. There are emulators too, of course, but they can be problematic, and why bother with a download when you can play them online?
I found this treasure trove of flash and java versions of old games the other day over on a website called, appropriate enough, “Classic Online Games“. They have sections for old Commodore 64, Nintendo, Sega, and Arcade games, and all sections are full of games any 80′s kid will recognize, plus some you might not.
All of the games on the site are free to play. Some have been updated to a point-and-click interface, and all can be played with a keyboard and mouse, though, you’ll find that using a keyboard for most of them can be problematic. You may need a USB joystick or controller to properly play some of them. I don’t usually plug merchants on this blog, but you can get both over ThinkGeek (and no, I am not paid to say so).
As for me, maybe I’ll spend some time trying to see if I can even get close to my old high scores on some of these games.
Oh, and Happy Birthday Pac-Man, may you munch ghosts happily all day long.
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