Looking Pac-ward
June 23, 2010 12:33 AM   Subscribe

 
Does the black magic marker ink seem a little too rich in its darkness given the document's purported antiquity?

Maybe it's the weed, but I'm suspicious of the authenticity of this.

But if it is real, and I hope it is, I fucking love it.
posted by jeremy b at 12:51 AM on June 23, 2010


Thank you. That's really quite cool :)
posted by Enki at 1:04 AM on June 23, 2010


So according to the original idea, when you reach the hi score of 99990, a scary red symbol appears, and the ghosts go invisible - presumably on a suicide mission to prevent you from reaching 100,000?
posted by UbuRoivas at 2:45 AM on June 23, 2010 [1 favorite]


Maybe it's the weed, but I'm suspicious of the authenticity of this.

Must be the weed. That's Toru Iwatani, all right, so why would he fake his own design sketches? If they've been stuck in a folder for thirty years the marker pen won't have faded.
posted by rory at 3:23 AM on June 23, 2010


Those made me feel all weepy.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 4:10 AM on June 23, 2010


What does the red stamp mean?
posted by delmoi at 4:45 AM on June 23, 2010


Oh and the other thing, anyone else find it odd that the pictures were taken on, what I assume is, a train?
posted by delmoi at 4:46 AM on June 23, 2010


Graph paper!

Those sketches remind me of the revolutionary new video game *I* was going to make when I was like 10. It was going to be like Pac-Man...BUT WITH A DIFFERENT MAZE!!! I was going to be the most famous person in the world.
posted by DU at 4:56 AM on June 23, 2010 [2 favorites]


Ah, the good old days when anybody could be a game designer with some graph paper. 'Go make it look like this, winged programming monkeys! Use your bizarre jibber jabber to make machines do my awesome bidding in exchange for shiny quarters!' Good memories of planning sprites on my C=64.

Previously featured on Metafilter - an elaborate reverse engineering of the game.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 4:58 AM on June 23, 2010 [7 favorites]


What does the red stamp mean?

= Secret.
posted by stringbean at 5:05 AM on June 23, 2010 [5 favorites]


Those dead-end nooks in the lower corners are nasty.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:11 AM on June 23, 2010 [1 favorite]


Lovely. But what else is in that sketch pad?
posted by Stan Carey at 5:12 AM on June 23, 2010 [2 favorites]


Meanwhile, on a bus somewhere in the middle of Bum Fuck Egypt, the disheveled duo Buckner & Garcia continues to harangue fellow passengers with long-winded, meandering tales about the grueling, weeks-long process of writing and recording their 1982 hit song "Pac Man Fever", occasionally illustrating a point with the help of a visual aid produced from a tattered, weather-beaten satchel. Among the items displayed are newspaper clippings, a faded press release, complete with posed black-and-white band photo, original guitar tablatures, and an early rough draft of the lyrics scribbled on a mustard-stained Hardee's napkin.

Sadly, no one has a camera.
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:19 AM on June 23, 2010 [1 favorite]


That "Pac-Man Dossier" link is amazing. Thanks, obiwan.
posted by mintcake! at 9:51 AM on June 23, 2010


Awesome! Thanks ShawnStruck.

In other Pac-Man news, this new Pac-Man game with four player co-op looks like a lot of fun.
posted by joedan at 1:03 PM on June 23, 2010 [1 favorite]


"Does the black magic marker ink seem a little too rich in its darkness given the document's purported antiquity?"

Bet he used a technical pen instead of a felt marker. Depending on what kind of ink he was using the lines would be somewhat to completely archival.
posted by Mitheral at 1:49 PM on June 23, 2010 [1 favorite]



Bet he used a technical pen instead of a felt marker. Depending on what kind of ink he was using the lines would be somewhat to completely archival.



Someone should start a new blog about the pen he used.
posted by Liquidwolf at 2:31 PM on June 23, 2010 [2 favorites]


Oh man, joedan, the best multiplayer Pac-Man came as a bonus disc with some unremarkable 3D Pac-Something game for the GameCube. You plugged a GameBoy Advance into one of the controller slots; 3 people played as ghosts, and each could see only a limited portion of the board nearest them on the television; the fourth played as Pac-Man, and could see the entire board on the GBA screen. If a ghost caught Pac-Man, the two players swapped controls. Incredibly fun.
posted by nicepersonality at 6:14 AM on June 24, 2010


Roland Barthes Reviews Pac-Man.
posted by homunculus at 9:46 PM on June 26, 2010


I was more of the Galaga era, but this post stuck with me in that "early computing" way. Thanks. Others who were of that era got distant look in eye.
posted by wallstreet1929 at 5:03 PM on June 30, 2010


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