Reminding my self to relate here the story of the French foreign exchange student and the other story of the pilfered change from my brother. They both relate to pac-man.


Right now I have to organize my NYC pix and find an hour to do a proper post about it.

THE
LOTS TO TELL
AARDVARK

You know, I'm kind of the same way. My earliest memories of Pac-Man weren't from the arcades, but from the computer. In the early 80s we had the TRS-80 and the Apple II, both of which had multiple Pac-Clones. Then we got the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man, and I just don't remember it being as bad as people say it was. I mean, I can look at it now and, gosh, it looks terrible when compared to the arcade version, but as a kid it seemed okay to me -- especially since there wasn't a Pac-Man machine within walking distance to my house ... so yeah, the Atari version was better than not playing it at all!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JEG1TttkBo[/youtube]
Apple II Version

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_HCeK6prYc[/youtube]
Commodore 64 Version

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL2p2ANFlQ4[/youtube]
Atari 2600 Version

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jQkBiU_2rg[/youtube]

You can do it. You can do the Pac-Man.

My memory is really hazy, so maybe some of the facts are wrong. But I seem to recall what I am about to say. That makes it somewhat true, yesno?

I think my first exposure to Pac-Man wasn't the arcade version. I think it was the frigging 2600 version.

I may have been tangentially aware of the arcade version. I'm almost sure I would have had to have seen it - my mom took my brother and I to the arcade all the time. But I remember one of the neighbors bringing the 2600 version over one weekend.

I don't believe I was thinking, "this sucks" or whatever. I don't think I had a pronounced ability to hate in my system at that point. I remember playing it a few times and such thinking, "ehh." I loved games like Adventure, Yar's Revenge and Video Pinball for the 2600, so I was certainly capable of getting past the dodgy graphics. Anyway, we eventually had the cartridge at home, so I guess someone eventually bought it.

As I'm sure most of you know thanks to Google's awesome custom playable banner, this weekend marks Pac-Man's 30th birthday. I thought this might be a good place for us to share our collective Pac-Man stories.

And if no one wants to share, well, here's a table top Pac-Man cabinet made out of Legos, complete with a working 48-in-1 board inside.

[img]http://www.ubergizmo.com/photos/2010/5/pacman-lego-arcade.jpg[/img]