Google’s Interactive Pac-Man Doodle

The 1980 arcade labyrinth action video game Pac-Man, also known as Puck Man in Japan, was created and published by Namco. As part of its licensing arrangement with Namco America, Midway Manufacturing distributed the game in North America.

These days, the Google Doodle is a constant in daily internet life. Every day, a new image appears on the Google homepage, and some days it stands out more than others. For instance, it really stands out when it's interactive. However, the first interactive doodle will always be remembered for how annoying it was.

The Pac-Man game was played in Google's first interactive doodle, which was released in May 2010 in honor of the video game's 30th birthday. In spite of being accessible for only 48 hours, 500,000,000 game hours were played during that time. It was estimated that $120 million in lost productivity resulted from the amount of time employees spent playing the game rather than performing the tasks they were supposed to be performing.

Developer(s): Namco
Publisher(s): JP/DE: Namco
NA/FRA: Midway
Designer(s): Toru Iwatani
Programmer(s): Shigeo FunakiShigeichi Ishimura
Artist(s): Hiroshi Ono