A Playable PAC-MAN On Google Doodle 286
Kilrah_il and several other readers made sure we noted Google's tribute to PAC-MAN on its 30th anniversary — a playable game implemented in JavaScript. "'To play the game, go to google.com during the next 48 hours (because it's too cool to keep for just one day) and either press the "Insert Coin" button or just wait for a few seconds.' There is also an Easter egg for those who want to recall one of the first multi-player games, but you'll have to RTFA to find it." This doodle may overshadow the Official PAC-MAN 30th Anniversary Destination.
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
Insert coin twice to enable multiplayer.
One player is controlled via arrow keys, the other by wasd.
Multiplayer Google Doodle (Score:5, Informative)
If you have a friend on hand (or some serious ambidextrous skills....) click "Inser Coin" twice and use the WASD keys to control MsPacman!
Productivity (Score:5, Informative)
FYI iPhone (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, it works on iPhone. Not very well, mind you, but it is controllable with swipes.
Have a Nice Day, Adobe!
NSFW (Score:3, Informative)
Noticed it at work this morning.
Told a few people.
Poster should note that there is SOUND!
Sporadically every now and then I hear Pac-Man going on a few cubes away. lol.
Mute your sound before going to Google if your in an Office setting... Unless they are cool enough to let you play video games at work. My bosses are a bit sticky about that.
Re:Meh (Score:1, Informative)
You're not missing much. This is a poor clone of the game. It LOOKS good but plays horrible (compared to the arcade original). The ghosts are stupid (run in circles instead of after you), the maze has tunnels that don't match up creating dead ends, and the ghosts stay blue forever. I didn't think it possible but it appears somebody programmed a worse game than Atari Pac-Man (which looks crap but is fun to play):
Atari 2600 (1977) - http://reparent.blog.uvm.edu/images/Atari%20Pacman.gif [uvm.edu]
"Marketing pressed Programmer Tod Frye to produce the game on a very strict timetable. Atari engineering would demand Frye complete the game in the standard 4K ROM, despite his repeated requests that 8K of ROM be allocated. Confined by time and available memory, Frye proposed the unthinkable. He approached Atari CEO Ray Kassar, and suggested a royalty agreement. Frye threatened to quit Atari and join Activision, leaving Pac-Man unfinished and Atari without its benchmark title." Also Frye said he hated Pac-Man and thought it was a dumb game.
Later variants were better:
Ms. PacMan - http://www.atariage.com/screenshot_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=320 [atariage.com]
Jr. PacMan - http://www.atariage.com/screenshot_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=254 [atariage.com]
PacMan Arcade http://www.atariage.com/2600/hacks/screenshots/s_MrPacMan_Hack_1.png [atariage.com]
Re:Meh (Score:1, Informative)
The ghosts don't stay blue forever. They work just fine.
Sure, they had to compromise on the map to make it spell "Google". Oh well.
The ghost logic is supposedly the same as in the original game. It's possible that it doesn't work as well on this map, though.
Re:FYI iPhone (Score:2, Informative)
Have a nice day indeed, since it still uses a Flash object for sounds.
Very cool. (Score:3, Informative)
It's not entirely done in JavaScript - they have an off-screen Flash applet that handles the sound.
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
They have a bug in the Pacman game.
If you try to do a Google search in the search bar after you're done playing the game, the WASD keys don't work. Even after you do the search from the first page, and the first page of results shows up, you still can't use those keys.
I'm betting that "pcmn" is going to be one of today's hottest Google trends.
Re:How is this impressive in any way? (Score:3, Informative)
It's also the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back today.
Re:Javascript is evil (Score:3, Informative)
Newsflash: your laptop probably pulls about 20W no matter what you're doing on it (and most of that is lost to conversion costs) and even running at 100% CPU would probably only have a handful of watts more. However you lose about 30W constantly every time the battery needs to charge. So technically, if you were *THAT* worried about being green, you'd be unplugging your battery whenever you use your laptop and the battery is already fully charged. Desktop systems are more power-hungry too. Hell, your display probably does anywhere from 10 to 30W depending on your brightness setting and how many white pixels are on screen.
At 100% CPU (incredibly unlikely, but if you have a single rogue Windows service, you're probably pulling more CPU than any Javascript game+ interpreter would ever use) you're probably adding something in the region of 10W, say. The cost of an energy saving lightbulb. Additionally if would take you 10 DAYS of you doing that 24/7 for it to compensate for someone who left their heating / aircon on for an extra hour or so while they went shopping.
So please, stop talking crap about being green. You saved nothing. The average US house is pulling an average of about 1000KWh every month, over 1KWh every hour. You saved, with the over-exaggerated calculation that I just did, less than 1% of the electricity used in your home at any one time. And if you did it for, say, a 5-minute game of Pacman, that's about 0.003% of a day, so by not playing you decreased your average consumption that day by approximatley 0.00003%. Lowering the temperature on your heating / raising the temperature on your aircon by 1/2th a degree would make something like ten thousand times more difference.
If you want to be green, stop using artificial heating / cooling, not worrying about your lightbulbs, laptop or painting your house an energy-saving colour. If being green is affecting your life to the extent that you want to say 0.00003% of your consumption for a day, then I assume you've cut out ALL non-essential electrical appliances that contribute more than that to your electricity bill?
However, I agree with your point in principle (you shouldn't need Javascript to run Pacman) but if you were worried about cycles on that level, you wouldn't be using any modern OS whatsoever.
Re:This is awesome! (Score:4, Informative)
The Google PacMan kill screen [twitpic.com] for you
Re:Productivity (Score:2, Informative)
i call that "Saturday"
Re:This is awesome! (Score:3, Informative)
The google-doodle - ALSO has this emulated. Now THAT is attention to detail.
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(you don't have a home arcade with full-size arcade games taking up part of the house? Dude - ask the wife - I'm sure she'll understand)