Thursday 17 May 2007

HERALD'S LEGENDARY PASTIME -- PACMAN

A reader sent us a link to this game. PACMAN once upon a time used to inspire a warlike passion amongst the staffers at HERALD. Play it, see if it does the same to you guys. The best part about it, is that you can play it offline too. Its best remedy for getting your focus back on track, immediately once you are on your workstation. Are there such quirks which makes other orgaisations tick? Pls write back to us.
This here is the link to the game PACMAN and a few words about it.
http://www.capehostpro.com/play-pacman.html?=pacman

The History of Pac-man

Pac-Facts by Doug Trueman

We've compiled a list of facts you probably never knew about Pac-Man. Some of these are also included later in this feature, but we thought it would be best if we assembled them into a list of small, bite-sized pieces.

  • Pac-Man is the best-selling coin-operated game in history. Forget Street Fighter 2 and Tetris. In the game's debut year alone, over 100,000 Pac-Man machines were made and sold around the world.
  • Namco estimates that the original Pac-Man arcade title has been played more than ten billion times in its 20-year history. Namco's total Pac-Man revenues have reached $100 million... one quarter at a time.
  • Pac-Man was inspired by a pizza with a slice missing. Namco designer Tohru Iwatani went out for the evening with some friends and then dove for dinner. The rest is history.
  • 1982 saw the debut of ABC's animated cartoon, The Pac-Man Show. It ran for two years as Pac-Man tried to save his friends and Pac-Land from the evil Mezmaron.
  • Jerry Buckner and Gary Garcia spoofed Ted Nugent's song Cat Scratch Fever and turned it into Pac-Man Fever. The song hit number nine.
  • Dozens of hacked versions of Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man exist. These games give the Pac character a speed bonus with the push of a button or more challenging mazes with complex series of turns.
  • It took eight people 15 months to complete the original Pac-Man arcade title. Four worked on the hardware, four worked on the software.
  • Pac-Man and his fellow Pacs travel 20 percent faster through mazes that have been cleared of dots than when they're eating. If you've got a ghost on your tail, head for open ground.
  • Pac-Man has been licensed to more than 250 companies for over 400 products. There are Pac-Man air fresheners, cereal boxes, flip phones, costumes, record books, and even a hot rod.
  • The business world has co-opted Pac-Man's name as a technique to protect against a hostile takeover. The defending company would instead swallow the larger company in a move known as the Pac-Man defense.
  • In July of 1999, Florida resident and die-hard Pac-Man fan Billy Mitchell achieved the first perfect score in Pac-Man (3,333,360) after playing for six hours straight. He beat all 256 screens eating every dot, fruit, and ghost (all four ghosts were eaten with each power pellet) - using only one Pac-Man!
  • The author of this article has a huge Pac-Man pillow on his sofa. He also inexplicably gained 50 pounds over the course of writing this feature.

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Do these guys work at all? OR just play...

19 May 2007 at 19:32  
Blogger The Hoolet said...

Three cheers to Pacman.
A few of us back in Herald used to be hardcore Pacman gamers. I remember Caetan, Manuel, Sertor, among others who were experts at the game. It used to be a feverish atmoshpere once the familiar music came on with the p.com command in DOS mode.
Those who made 1 lakh points were the masters. I think we could have safely crowned Caetan as the master of that game.
Amazingly, despite pacman, the newspaper came out the next day and all the DI and press notes were typed out perfectly and even the pages were not delayed.
Pacman was the perfect example of how a little bit of play helped Jack to work better.
During those days, even after Herald's tech support guys wiped out all games from the system, citing shortage of server space, somewhere someone hid the game and brought it alive again.
The allure and addictivity of the PACMAN game was in its simplicity. it also occupied negligible disk space as compared to many games these days.
Recently when I was in Goa, my brother helped me to trace out the original Pacman we used to play in Herald. I had lost it when I left Herald but by the Grace of God, I managed to find it on the net.
What a coincidennce that I find a mention of it in Penpricks, just when I have begun to play it again after a long time, after nearly a six years gap.
After the original PACMAN, there were other less attractive versions. But i still prefer the original DOS pacman.
ofcourse nowadays I dont have to give the dos command of p.com but only have to double click on it.
If anybody still needs the game, pls contact me.
HAIL PACMAN

27 May 2007 at 19:17  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Herald has changed in many ways. Was horrified some time ago to read a sign saying "Smoking Banned in this Building". Remember the good old days when the sub-ed area below used to be a haze of smoke.

A non-smoking Herald building is like a church with a 'No Prayer' sign.

And why are there all these threatending notices everywhere about what will happen to you if you do or not do various things. Order mania.

27 May 2007 at 19:20  
Blogger Pen Pricks said...

Hey vis, if you do not mind, could you ls put up the original pacman link of the blog... Would appreciate it

27 May 2007 at 23:09  
Blogger The Hoolet said...

hey penprick, i dont know the link but i have it on my desktop. if u can tell me how to upload it on ur blog then i will gladly do it.
there is nothing more cheerful than adding more to the number of the pacgamers

28 May 2007 at 20:24  
Blogger Pen Pricks said...

Thanks vis... could you please send it as an attached file to penpricks@gmail.com
Obliged

28 May 2007 at 20:27  

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