By Staff
Pac-Man, never one to regard his gut as a glass half empty when he could be gorging himself on dots, turns 25 years old this month.
He'll blow out his birthday candles and devour the cake, too, all while keeping a step ahead of his "ghosts" from a quarter century of less than exemplary eating habits.
It's probably a stretch to blame Pac-Man's insatiable appetite for ours, but where was he always racing off to if not away from the low-carb craze he could see coming down the pike at the end of his smorgasbord?
If he had a voice, he would have been first to shout, "Super size me!" even before that term had been coined.
Pac-Man spent the 1980s dashing through that maze and gobbling ever larger quantities of cherries, strawberries, apples and pretzels, not working out on a treadmill. He was inspired by a piece-missing pizza.
What did we find so appealing about Pac-Man and his mania that, like a hit TV show, spawned spinoffs such as Ms. Pac-Man and Junior Pac-Man and caused us to slide so many quarters into his slot?
Sure, he was a huge improvement on "Pong."
One videogame author theorizes that Pac-Man pioneered a persona that people could identify with, like a hero, as their joy sticks maneuvered madly to thwart Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde as they sneak in from the sides or sidle menacingly out of that central corral.
While glorifying gluttony smacks of an American innovation, Pac-Man came from Japan.
A young designer at Namco, suitably inspired by a pizza missing a slice, created "Puck-Man." Because it rhymed with a four-letter word, the game became "Pac-Man" for its U.S. debut in June 1980.
Pac-Man, like love songs that poured from our AM radios in summers of yesteryear, seems kind of quaint in an era which measures games by the video violence level and music by the harshness of hip-hop lyrics.
Pac-Man wasn't complicated, so it appealed to a broad range of ages, but Billy Mitchell, 39, of Hollywood, Fla., ranks as the ultimate player.
He is the first and only person known to have played a perfect game for a 3,333,360 score over all 256 levels in 1999.
What a sweet six hours that must have been before he needed to reach for an antacid after all that eating.
Namco sold 293,822 arcade machines by 1987 and we can play now on our home computers, but somehow it's not the same without the quarter risk.
There will be a 25th anniversary edition of the old arcade machine and new games in 2005, including 3D and "Pac-Man Pinball," which is ironic considering the role the former played in killing the latter.
As for Pac-Man himself, he coincidentally bears a physical resemblance to Wal-Mart's smily cost-cutter in commercials.
Happy birthday, guy.
You have the staying power of a golden oldie.