Friday, May 21, 2010

Google celebrates Pac-Man's 30th anniversary with playable logo

Google celebrates Pac-Man's 30th anniversary with playable logo

by Randy Nelson

{ May 21st 2010 at 11:00AM } PC


A playable ... logo? That's exactly what web giant Google has today, in celebration of the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man's Japanese release. The doodle (Google's term for its event and holiday-specific logos) is accessible on its main page and is a full 255-level game complete with a 256th level "kill screen," just like the original coin-op.

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.

So, for today at least, you can tell your boss: "I may be browsing the web and playing a game, but I'm also being part of something historic."

Note: Joystiq assumes no responsibility for any repercussions that result from playing Google's Pac-Man doodle at work.

Tags: anniversary, google, google-doodles, Namco, Namco-Bandai, pac-man

Posted via web from tonyburkhart's posterous

Introducing Google TV

http://www.google.com/tv/

This is the future. A device that aggregates online and broadcast TV effectively. I hope this is a build, over the Android OS, so it will integrate with mobile devices easily. I also hope this isn't the beginning of the giant riff between Google and Apple, although they are two different companies, with two different modus operandi. I think this may be the beginning of the divide for the two and we the consumers will have to choose. I'm guessing this is part of the HTML5 battle too, between H.264 and WebM project with VP8.

Posted via web from tonyburkhart's posterous