Play PacMan at google.com Now.

by mapleoin • 16 years ago

298 90 16 years ago

mcav• 16 years ago

<incorrect> And here I thought that Google had implemented PacMan in HTML5 on their logo, given their presentation at Google I/O. </incorrect>

EDIT: I didn't see that you had to click "Insert Coin" to start.

ericz• 16 years ago

That's not what they did?

ugh• 16 years ago

They don’t use canvas, just a lot of divs and javascript.

chaosmachine• 16 years ago

It's implemented with javascript and html, but they're using Flash for sound.

bd2• 16 years ago

Unfortunately Flash is currently pretty much unavoidable if you want sound effects in JS games.

I experimented with <audio> tag in HTML5 game few days ago: it's fine for media player type applications (where you play longer sounds with looser coupling to user actions), but it's not there yet for games (implementation-wise, API is ok).

If you need to play a lot of tiny sounds in rapid response to player actions, you are going to get random weird behaviors and cross-browser inconsistencies: noticeable lags, cracking noises, cuts and repetitions.

Femur• 16 years ago

Boy, did that surprise the heck out of me. I never worry about keeping my speakers turned up when going to google.com

mbrubeck2• 16 years ago

Apparently this is overwhelming the Firefox support forums and chat lines:

https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/678373

grhino• 16 years ago

CoolPreviews, an addon for Firefox, caused the PacMan music to play even when the user wasn't viewing google.com. They've released an update that fixes the issue.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2207/

jacquesm4• 16 years ago

Bad move by google, really. Start on a button click is one thing but auto-starting something that makes a bunch of noise on a page that has always been totally silent is really dumb.

marcusbooster• 16 years ago

Insert a second coin for Ms. Pac-Man multi-player.

joezydeco• 16 years ago

That's pretty hot. WASD controls Ms. Pac.

mambodog• 16 years ago

I've no friends, so I'm just playing two-handed. Try it for an extra challenge..

yanowitz• 16 years ago

Best. Logo. Ever.

ashishbharthi• 16 years ago

Time has come for interactive Google Logos. This will be so much fun.

mike-cardwell• 16 years ago

Wonder how many global man hours are going to be wasted by people playing this game today ;)

MikeCapone• 16 years ago

I wonder if it'll show on the stock market...

javanix2• 16 years ago

It might help ... maybe happy people can make a bit of a rally.

wizard_22• 16 years ago

I just played a level with my boss. I'm disappointed it doesn't load up on the droid.

ccc3• 16 years ago

Does this imply that nobody uses the "I'm feeling lucky" button?

volida• 16 years ago

and saves a lot of money for Google too

kingkilr• 16 years ago

I don't think so, didn't google publish that they "lose" 60 million USD or something beaues people click it and don't see ads :)

zandorg• 16 years ago

The goodwill from that is probably worth more than $60,000,000!

inerte• 16 years ago

Nobody uses the I'm feeling luck button. I remember Marissa Mayer saying so and here are some links http://www.google.com/search?hl=pt-BR&safe=off&clien...

josefresco• 16 years ago

Google is replacing the need for the "I'm feeling lucky" button with their auto-complete system. It's the same effect as the button but is shown in the auto-complete field while the user is typing.

This has the same side effect for Google regarding ads as does the button. Although if a user wants to be taken directly to website ABC they prob aren't a good audience for ads.

moskie• 16 years ago

I find it very useful to use as a search destination for the address bar.

For example, in Chrome, add this as one of the Search Engines in the options dialog: http://www.google.com/search?q=%s&btnI=Im+Feeling+Lucky

I've associated that with the keyword "gg"

Now, when I go to the address bar and type a query whose first Google result I am confident will be the destination I want, I've got a great way to get there.

Example:

"gg imdb Forest Gump"

Will get me to IMDB's Forest Gump page. So you can pretty much imagine the power here, especially for reference sites. Type the site name and the query, and you'll end up where you want to be.

trezor• 16 years ago

If you want reference sites, why not just add them directly?

Most of those sites has an opensearch provider.

bkudria• 16 years ago

You should use http://yubnub.com, which will let you just type "imdb Forest Gump", among many, many, many other things.

logic• 16 years ago

Nope. Unless, of course, you're googling "Do you feel lucky, punk?".

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=&q=do+you+fe...

timcederman• 16 years ago

The one that appears after you start typing?

kacy• 16 years ago

It works on the iPhone too. Type in the address in Safari, then click Classic mode at the bottom of the screen. ^_^

ukdm• 16 years ago

I found a bug... collected a pill as a previous one's time allotment was ending and it didn't register in the game.

RodgerTheGreat3• 16 years ago

If anybody's curious about the source, here's a reformatted version:

http://pastebin.com/enyeHeKg

xhuang• 16 years ago

thanks, just wondering what tools did you use to reformat it?

RodgerTheGreat3• 16 years ago

No prob. I used http://jsbeautifier.org/ - the first google result for "Javascript Reformatter". It's a pretty spiffy little tool.

cmelbye2• 16 years ago

Only Google would write 3,162 lines of source code for something that would be on their site for 24 hours.

EDIT: You wouldn't happen to be Rodger from the nonlogic community, would you?

RodgerTheGreat3• 16 years ago

Aw, you caught me. :)

How's it shakin'?

eli• 16 years ago

First 1000 lines are just the map and related data

petercooper• 16 years ago

Ah, but in terms of play hours divided by development hours, this is bound to trump most indie games.

studer2• 16 years ago

You wouldn't be prepared to write 3,162 lines of code for something with a guaranteed audience of hundreds of millions of people? What does it take for you to get out of bed? Billions of viewers?

jah2• 16 years ago

Haha, they've even included a kill screen:

  g.level == 256 && g.killScreen()

jah2• 16 years ago

And here it is (after a little Firebug hacking):

http://imgur.com/fNjWJ.png

rpbertp13• 16 years ago

Try removing ghosts with Firebug and play blind pac man!

someone_here• 16 years ago

Well there goes my day.

xephris• 16 years ago

Works on Android as well! But not BlackBerry.

jeiting• 16 years ago

I would like to see how many millions google makes by disabling the I'm Feeling Lucky button today.

dunham• 16 years ago

Aside from no sound, it works on the iPad. They seem to be handling touch events (swipes) for movement.

zsouthboy• 16 years ago

Sound is played using Flash, so that's why it doesn't work.

wizard_22• 16 years ago

booo! why wont it load on the droid?

bengl• 16 years ago

Same on my Nexus One.

pclark• 16 years ago

at least it isn't flash.

how senior did the approval have to be to get this allowed, do you think?

jacquesm4• 16 years ago

It's partially flash.

minalecs• 16 years ago

I think we are all missing the point, that its <b> Pac-Man's 30th anniversary </b>. But yes the playable logo, just adds to the awesomeness

rawat81• 16 years ago

May be Google will dish out there own anti spyware & antivirus for chrome next.

I liked the plain old google page .. simple

timf• 16 years ago

Would be awesome to see a high score list.

enterneo• 16 years ago

I love pacman, but still the game should NOT start automatically (the sound is really irritating).

follower2• 16 years ago

If you want to remove the sound use this bookmarklet which deletes the iframe used to load the Flash file:

javascript:(function(){var rancidbacon={};try{rancidbacon.com=document.getElementsByName("pm-sound")[0];rancidbacon.com.parentElement.removeChild(rancidbacon.com);}catch(_){}})()

More details here: http://stuff.rancidbacon.com/google-pacman/

neovive3• 16 years ago

NoScript blocked the googleusercontent.com by default, so I didn't even realize there was sound until reading this discussion.

jacquesm4• 16 years ago

I agree with that. By accident the volume on this machine was still way up from watching a movie, and it must have woken up the whole damn building.

Mark_B• 16 years ago

Anybody know how to save the page off for posterity? A simple "Save Page As" didn't seem to work.

snprbob86• 16 years ago

It will probably show up in the archive at:

http://www.google.com/logos/index.html

soundlab• 16 years ago

This is great, except for that some element of Google (address bar search?) is running in the background of my firefox browser and the siren audio is on a continuous loop even after leaving Google. No add-on or plug-in I remove helps.

pilif• 16 years ago

This even works on the abomination that is IE6.

That's what they get from not using Canvas or any other technology newer than 10 years old. The game is built of 8x8 pixel DIVs.

neovive3• 16 years ago

Maybe it was originally written for the 20th anniversary.

harry• 16 years ago

I hope I'm not the only one offended that the ghosts don't act like their pacman counterparts. Red is such a puss in google land!

WillyF• 16 years ago

I'd love to see the analytics on their home page for today.

sjs382• 16 years ago

Average time on site: 3 hours.

(no, not really)

scorpion032• 16 years ago

9030.

My score.

jazzychad• 16 years ago

I wonder how much of the code was inspired by Neven Mrgan's PieGuy iphone webapp game, also written in html/js.

http://mrgan.tumblr.com/post/257187093/pie-guy

http://mrgan.com/pieguy/ <-- go here on your iphone

castis• 16 years ago

I dont know why, but I'm really happy this exists.

l4u• 16 years ago

it lowers my productivity :( but it's fun

neovive3• 16 years ago

Someone needs to publish a revised PacMan strategy guide for getting around all those extra obstacles. Should you get pellot inside the G at the start or end?

dryicerx• 16 years ago

Just imagine the productivity drop around the world...

naqeeb• 16 years ago

Too bad they didn't modify Pacman so that the ghosts have an apple logo and the pellets are Android phones.

mawhidby• 16 years ago

On an unrelated note, as of 3:33PM EST, this story has 262 points over 4 hours, and is ranked lower than "Facebook caught sharing secret data with advertisers", which has 210 points over 16 hours (this story ranked 27, the facebook story 23). Is there a reason for this? Shouldn't this be near the top of HN?

lhorie• 16 years ago

FWIW, I had posted this earlier

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1367899

Edit: actually it seems this post one is older. Hadn't seen it :(

indrax• 16 years ago

This is going to spike their time-on-front-page statistics.

dayjah• 16 years ago

love this!

heresy• 16 years ago

I woke up to my girlfriend playing this.

Awesome :)

oilfieldtrash• 16 years ago

What's the matter with you guys? THe PacMan thing was great. What a fun surprise. I've been to Google now 10 times in the past two days-- and I usually only use their serach engine once or twice a day. Stopped me from going to dogpile......

operandx• 16 years ago

I've uploaded a copy of the Google PAC-MAN Doodle here:

http://operandx.com/GooglePacman/Play.html

Enjoy!

Play PacMan at google.com Now.

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