PAC-MAN World Online

As we celebrate the 30th birthday of PAC-MAN, Google brings back the classic arcade game in a unique way - an online playable doodle. And we can only hope you find using this Google doodle at least a quarter as enjoyable as eating dots and chasing ghosts. There's a light-hearted, human touch to both of them. They're both deceptively straightforward, carefully hiding their complexity under the hood.

PAC-MAN seems like a natural fit for the Google homepage. The game joins the party and you can play together with someone else (PAC-MAN is controlled with arrow keys or by clicking on the maze). We also added a little Easter egg: if you throw in another coin, Ms. Pac-Man will appear.

Google doodler Ryan Germick and I made sure to include PAC-MAN's original game logic, graphics, and sounds, bringing back ghosts' individual personalities, and even recreate original bugs from this 1980s masterpiece. During the next 48 hours (because it's too cool to keep for just one day), you can play PAC-MAN on Google's homepage by either pressing the 'Insert Coin' button or just waiting a few seconds.

Tōru Iwatani's creation stood out as one of the first video games aimed at a broader audience, with a cute story of pizza-shaped character gobbling dots in a maze, colorful characters, friendly design, very little violence, and everlasting fun. PAC-MAN, whose popularity transcended the geopolitical barriers of that time.

When I was growing up, my dad had the best job I could possibly imagine: he was an arcade game and pinball technician. That meant summer trips through Poland's coastal cities with their seasonal arcade parlors peeking inside cabinets to learn programming and engineering secrets - and of course, free games! Now, you can rediscover some of your 8-bit memories or meet PAC-MAN for the first time through this unique Google doodle. So go ahead, take a trip down memory lane and enjoy playing PAC-MAN World Online.

Pac man world online