Mad Ducketts: The $500 Pac-Man Watch

My kind of smart watch.

OK, these things don't come up often on eBay and when they do, they're gone PDQ. It's the Nelsonic Pac-Man watch and back in 198-whatever, they were hot, very hot, since the Holy Grail of gaming at that time was to bring Pac-Man into the home, even if he was a three millimeter dot on an LCD screen the size of a postage stamp. Nelsonic, who still exists today but just makes boring old regular watches (boo!) produced two different models of the highly coveted Pac-Man watch - one with the tiniest little joystick you've ever seen, and another that employed basic directional buttons instead - apparently the tiny joystick was too easily lost or broken for them to keep producing. 30 years later, Nelsonic's game watches are just as hot as they were when they were new (albeit in a much smaller market) and right now there's one on eBay that hails from the U.K., so I guess you wear it on your other wrist. The starting bid for this electronic bad boy? Just £299.99. That's about $500 to us Yanks, and there's three days left on the auction so I'm pretty sure the price will go up from there. Check out the video below to see a demo of someone else's awesome watch and then click the link to drop some mad ducketts on my Christmas present…and please include a gift receipt if you can. Thanks!

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE LISTING FOR THE PAC-MAN WATCH

When Pac-Man Ruled the World

Dig-Dug

There was a time long ago when video game characters didn't have much character at all. For example in 1972's Pong, your "player" was simply a vertical white line on the edge of the screen while Atari's 1979 home console RPG hit, Adventure, boasted a nameless square as its protagonist. Designers who attempted to push beyond the limits of those early 2K programs did manage to create somewhat more recognizable objects such as blocky race cars or simple aliens, but nothing you would really call a "character." Well that all changed with the release of Namco's Pac-Man in 1980. For the first time, players could identify with a personality on their video game screen, including 4 unique ghosts/monsters that each had their own agenda and personal eccentricities. People everywhere immediately embraced Pac-Man, not just for its easy-to-learn/difficult-to-master gameplay but because they were endeared by the game's cast of characters. Other game designers quickly caught onto this new cartoony angle and steered it into a trend, introducing games with higher resolution graphics and more recognizable characters such as Q*Bert, Donkey Kong and of course, our beloved little Frogger. This jump from the abstract to the well-defined is also what helped launch Pac-Man into the world of mass-merchandising. Before his introduction, few kids would have been interested in a breakfast cereal based on Breakout but slap a picture of that little yellow dude and his colorful ghosty friends on a box and watch them fly off of the shelves. Soon enough, Pac-Man merchandise was everywhere: t-shirts, pajamas, watches, board games, drinking glasses, coin banks, stickers, hit songs, multi-vitamins, scratch-and-win games, TV shows...you get the idea. The world had literally changed overnight with the advent of Pac-Man at which point video games began their slow journey toward mainstream acceptance, which would eventually lead to iconic game characters like Mario, Chun-Li and even Master Chief making their particular marks on gaming history. Still not convinced? Then check out the videos to get some idea of just how Pac-Man-crazy the world was back in the stone-age. Save me a cherry.

EXCELLENT PAC-MAN RESOURCES:
CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE PAC-MAN DOSSIER
CLICK HERE TO VISIT SUPERPACMAN.COM

World's Biggest Pac-Man

The original Pac-Man game from Namco was an 80s classic and will always retain its crown as the top-dog of all video games. But if I could change one thing about it, it would be this: bigger boobs MORE MAZES. "So go play Ms. Pac-Man, you schmuck! It's got like four of them! (mazes, that is)" you brazenly respond. Well OK, Ms. Pac-Man's 4 mazes are definitely a step up from her old man's lone blue labyrinth, but it certainly doesn't hold a candle to this:

Yup, it's the world's biggest Pac-Man game and it was created entirely by ordinary netizens like you and me. Once logged into the site (using Facebook, of course), users can access a simple WYSIWYG editor that allows wanna-be game designers to create their own ultimate Pac-Man maze in just about any configuration they desire. When finished, the new maze is then is automatically linked to the existing collection of mazes via the escape tunnels, which, when entered, will transport the player's avatar to a whole new play-field, rather than just spitting him or her out of the tunnel on the opposite side (as was in the original game). The result of all of this effort is an endless, massive grid of interconnecting Pac-Man mazes that seem to go on forever. If you just want to play a quick game of dot-munch, however, and do not want to link your Facebook account to yet another damned website, you can do that too. There are plenty of unique mazes to start out on, each presenting its own twists and turns, while keeping intact the now-iconic sounds and sprites that make Pac-Man the game we all know and love.

One last thing. While I thought I'd never have to say this about any modern website built after Y2K, the site actually works best in Internet Explorer, and in fact (shudder), was designed specifically for it. So shut down your Chrome, Safari or Firefox and dig out that old M$ relic so you can get your digital noms on! Woof!

A big thanks to RetroGeeker fan, Cheryl, for tipping me off to this awesome, awesome site! Cheers!

CLICK HERE TO VISIT WORLDS BIGGEST PACMAN - NO QUARTERS REQUIRED

Stuck On Retro, Cuz Retro's Stuck On Me

Self-adhesive bandages (Band-Aids). We use them all the time but they always make you look like a dork. So why not look like a nerd instead with these bitchin' Pac-Man bandages? Game on!

CLICK HERE TO BUY THESE FROM PERPETUAL KID

Not all fun and games: Inside a Ms. Pac-Man factory

Imagine a dystopian universe in which all the world's industrial assembly robots have been replaced by clumsy people. Horrific image, right?

Now imagine that the world's consumer electronics assembly plants (staffed with the aforementioned fleshy, human laborers) have been moved overseas, and relocated in the United States of America. It's not a futurist nightmare, it's the past bitch!

Spend 4½ minutes on the Ms. Pac Man assembly line in this newly-digitized raw news footage from the Bally/Midway plant in Chicago, 1982.

At Retrogeeker, we know retro.

Pac 'yer buckaroos, retrogeek style

Next time you travel back to the future—or just to an 80's theme party—complete your bitchin' retro fashion ensemble with the ultimate retro billfold.

We'll assume you're already decked out in the aforementioned 8-bit sunglasses and Casio calculator watch, and are clad in a denim jacket with your favorite band painted on the back. Maybe some kind of vaguely mullety hairdo... I digress.

When it's time to pay for your drink—we'll assume you ordered cherry 7up cuz that shit is outrageous—whip out your hardshell cash protector. The ladies swoon:

Is that a 2600 cartridge in your pocket, or are you just a major retro geek?