The Playable Pac-Man Google Logo
May 21st, 2010 by Benj Edwards
In honor of Pac-Man’s 30th anniversary, Google has created its most amazing Google Doodle yet: a playable browser-based version of Pac-Man in the usual Google logo space. They did an excellent job, complete with authentic graphics, sounds, and scoring.
When you first go to Google, you’ll see a static image. Wait a few seconds and the page will reload with a hybrid JavaScript/Flash application (it uses Flash for sound) that brings the Google logo to life. Excellent work, Google!
P.S. If anyone figures out how to save a playable version of the game, let me know. I haven’t had to time to dig into it yet.
May 21st, 2010 at 8:33 pm
While I certainly appreciate the sentiment behind it, I was unfortunately one of those who experienced not a jolly game of Pac-Man when I loaded up Firefox earlier, but a frightening array of bleeps and boops that followed me to every site I visited until I looked up the problem and figured out what happened.
Turns out that when you have the common “Cool Previews” add-on in Firefox, combined with the default Firefoxified Google homepage, the game still loads, but you don’t see the Pac-ified logo. All you hear are the sounds and they stay on until you disable the add-on. Really ear-splitting beeps too, since I had my earphones in while using my netbook at a cafe today. Almost jumped out of my seat!
May 21st, 2010 at 9:06 pm
Wow, I have to admit that was really cool, and I did a lot better than I normally do playing anything using the keyboard arrows! (Not to say I did well; I just didn’t die repeatedly on the first level. Enjoying retro games doesn’t mean a person’s *good* at them, after all…)
Something a big odd, though… All of the Pac Man games I’ve played had him at the same speed as the ghosts, but Google’s version makes the ghosts a little faster so they can overtake & eat you.
May 22nd, 2010 at 2:34 pm
I played pac-man for an unreasonable amount of time back in the day. The ghosts were always faster than pac on a straight path. He could take corners faster though, giving you an opportunity to escape the pursuit.
May 22nd, 2010 at 6:04 pm
Zephyrxc is right. I also believe that Pac-Man is also slower while eating dots than when he is not.
May 23rd, 2010 at 12:06 pm
I love the fact that the game is JavaScript and HTML5.
May 23rd, 2010 at 12:17 pm
You can download the Google Pac-Man game here: http://www.mediafire.com/?kml3oz0mwyy . I can’t take the credit for it, though.
May 23rd, 2010 at 10:20 pm
Missed it (I don’t use Google search), but I can remember playing it on the old Atari 2600 years ago; I like how they used bird songs for all the sound effects in that game, at least in the Atari version.
May 24th, 2010 at 7:40 am
🙂 whenever you get time.. go here
http://www.google.com/pacman
May 24th, 2010 at 8:35 am
Thanks for the links, guys.
May 27th, 2010 at 8:06 pm
Pac-Man always slow down when eating.
July 30th, 2010 at 7:49 pm
There’s a LOT of detail about the internals of Pac Man here:
http://home.comcast.net/~jpittman2/pacman/pacmandossier.html
Compared to the many versions of Pac Man I’ve played it’s playable and is quite faithful to the original. It does have a bit of lag in the controls since it has to go through all those layers of rendering within a browser via JavaScript and Flash.
But, of course, the original arcade version is the real deal. Thank goodness for MAME. 😉
For grinz I took a peek at some of the source for Google’s implementation. If one wanted to they can create their own browser-based version with custom graphics. I don’t know about maze mods but it couldn’t be that hard. All the graphics are in one image file. 🙂
Which reminds me, does anyone else remember 3-Demon?