Google Celebrates Pac-Man's Birthday By Giving You A Playable Logo
May 21, 2010
As many of you may have already noticed by now, Google's home page has a new doodle at the top in celebration of Pac-Man's 30th birthday. At first glance it may seem like your everyday Google doodle, but upon further inspection it is actually a playable version of Pac-Man! This marks the first time ever that a doodle has been playable, and the best part is that you can play it on your Mac, iPhone, iPod, and iPad.
If you are visiting Google.com on your home computer and want to play Pac-Man, simply click on the "Insert Coin" button next to the usual "Google Search" button and the game will begin. You can control Pac-Man via your directional keys and start chomping away. If you click "Insert Coin" a second time you can actually play cooperatively with a friend. Ms. Pac-Man will show up as a playable character and she can be controlled via the WASD keys.
Since the game itself is coded in Javascript, you are actually able to play it on your iPhone and iPad, but there won't be any music or sounds.
To play Pac-Man on your iPad, just click the "Insert Coin" coin button just as you would on your computer. You are able to control Pac-Man by tapping on the playing field in whichever direction you want to go.
Playing on your iPhone is a little bit more difficult and not nearly as smooth, but it can be done. Going to Google.com on your iPhone by default will bring you to the mobile page, which doesn't have the Pac-Man doodle. But at the bottom of the page you can toggle it from the mobile view to the classic view, giving you the ability to see the doodle. Once again tapping on "Insert Coin" will start the game and tapping on the level will control Pac-Man.
Google will be leaving the Pac-Man doodle up for 48 hours instead of the usual 24 in order to allow you to take advantage of this awesome opportunity. It's Friday after all, and you should probably be working and not playing Pac-Man at Google.com. But that's only what you SHOULD be doing.