Japan: PacMan, still a hit after 30 years · Global Voices
Chris Salzberg

With his trademark piechart head and onomatopoeic “paku paku” chomp, Pac-Man looms large in the history of the modern video game. No other game character can be said to have captured the world's attention so thoroughly and transformed the game industry so profoundly. Born out of Japan's burgeoning game industry of the early 1980s, Pac-Man has outlived many of its contemporaries and remains popular even today.
In a sign of Pac-Man's longevity, many this weekend celebrated the 30th birthday of the famous game character. The game's creator, Japanese video game company Namco, took the opportunity to announce a brand new twist on the Pac-Man legacy: a new game, referred to as “Pac-Man Reborn”, reportedly be played via Twitter. Released in beta form this weekend in Japan only, the new game has been described as “the largest demolition derby of tiny pie charts ever seen“. (Follow @pacman_reborn in Japanese for more details.)
Pac-Man circa 1980
Google's Pac-Man logo, circa 2010
For most people however, including many in Japan, the reminder of Pac-Man's 30 year birthday came not from its maker but from Google, who commemorated the event by inserting the game into its own logo. Many Japanese were pleasantly surprised to stumble into the character, one of their country's most famous cultural exports, in its new online setting.
On Twitter in Japanese, people tagged comments on Google's java-based game with the hashtag #googlepacman_jp.
@cagesmile writes:
Googleロゴがパックマンだ！生誕30周年だって。しかも実際に今日から２日間遊べる！忠実に再現されている。InsertCoinボタンをもう一度押すと対戦プレイ。懐かしいなぁ。当時もそうだったけど、いつも見ているほう。１面もクリアできない…。 #googlepacman_jp
@fall_meet, who finally managed to clear the first level, pinpoints one of the charms of Pac-Man:
ゲームは苦手なので単純なものしかやらないです。でもパックマンは気軽に遊べていい感じ。 #googlepacman_jp
Blogger ss1200, a more experienced Pac-Man player, recalls:
高校生のころPC-6001MkII のパックマンをやりまくってました。結構うまく移植されてましたですよ。
Blogger and twitterer Yoshio (@yoshio_will), who had trouble getting past the second level of the game, decided to delve deeper to see if he could skip ahead to the rumored 256th level. Describing Google's code for the Pac-Man game, he writes:
なんというか色々とすさまじい。変数名に1文字のを使われると何がなんだか。
しかも全然改行がないので読みにくくてしょうがない。
どうやらCanvasを使って画像を出しているっぽい。音はどうしてんのかと思ったら、音出し専用Flashをスクリプトから呼び出しているらしい。うーむなんとも。
What can I say, it's really  something. Like they only use a single letter for the variable names. And there are absolutely no newlines so it's really hard to read.
They seem to be using [the HTML5 rendering engine] Canvas to create the images. I wondered what they were doing for the sounds, but it seems that it's calling a dedicated Flash script to produce them. Hmm…
A closer look revealed the key:
g.livesが残機数、g.levelが現在のステージなので、とりあえず254面にしてみた。
あとは一時停止を解除してやれば、「内容は1面だけど番号だけは254面」で動き出します。
この状態でとりあえず1面クリア。
すると、次に用意されるステージは255面になります。
g.lives is the number of lives remaining and g.level is the current level. To start I just set the level to 254. When I then released the pause, the game came back with the same first level screen, but the number switched to 254.
So first of all I just cleared the level, while in this state. When I cleared it, the next stage that came up was level 255.
After forging ahead through level 255, thanks to a bit of tinkering to grant extra lives, the blogger got to the 256th level, at which point things became strange.
Level 256 from the Google version of Pac-Man
え・・・。
もしかして無理矢理256面にしたからバグった？
と思ったんですが、どうやらアーケード版のバグの再現らしい。
The bug is in fact a “kill screen” from the original version of the game, meaning that the Google version — with its colorful 256th level — is in fact true to the original after all.
If the novelty of the new Pac-Man game and its mysterious 256th level were not enough to entice you to give it a try, consider that the game can also be played in 2-player mode. Catch it will it lasts!