Thursday 11 June 2015
Wednesday 10 June 2015
Monday 8 June 2015
Everyone Loves Pac-Man
'...Pac-Man is a cultural icon. Everyone loves Pac-Man.
But then you look a little closer, and there’s something … dark. While most players see a cute character chugging around a maze gobbling pills and running away from cute ghosties, others build a more sinister narrative.
For some cultural commentators the sheer compulsion of the game, its almost narcotic effect, is the darkness at its heart. If you’re good at it, Pac-Man ostensibly never ends. When you clear a maze, another one appears and you continue munching, driven by the “wacka wacka” sound effects. When Martin Amis wrote his now fabled book on arcade games, Invasion of the Space Invaders, his thoughts on Pac-Man largely concerned its enslaving properties: “I have seen bloodstains on the PacMan joystick [...] I know a young actress with a case of PacMan Hand so severe that her index finger looked like a section of blood pudding – yet still she played, and played through her tears of pain.”' (source)
But then you look a little closer, and there’s something … dark. While most players see a cute character chugging around a maze gobbling pills and running away from cute ghosties, others build a more sinister narrative.
For some cultural commentators the sheer compulsion of the game, its almost narcotic effect, is the darkness at its heart. If you’re good at it, Pac-Man ostensibly never ends. When you clear a maze, another one appears and you continue munching, driven by the “wacka wacka” sound effects. When Martin Amis wrote his now fabled book on arcade games, Invasion of the Space Invaders, his thoughts on Pac-Man largely concerned its enslaving properties: “I have seen bloodstains on the PacMan joystick [...] I know a young actress with a case of PacMan Hand so severe that her index finger looked like a section of blood pudding – yet still she played, and played through her tears of pain.”' (source)
Sunday 7 June 2015
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