Pac-Man (1980)

Anyone can play Pac-Man. Use joystick, run from ghosts, eat powerpill, eat ghosts.

Pac-Man fever was a real thing in the 1980’s spawning masses of merchandise, variations of the game, board games, you name it. It’s popularity may have waned somewhat over the years but we’d argue Pac-Man fever never quite went away.

Particularly popular with female games due to it’s non violent gameplay, it is as close to the ‘perfect game’ as we think there has ever been. And perfect game is exactly what you’ll need if you want to grab a slice of the high score action as 3,333,360 is precisely the highest achievable score, a feat which has been done already by quite a few players.

Today there are a variety of modern takes including the brilliant Pacman CE DX on modern consoles. You can play Pac-Man on your smartphone and Googling “play pacman” brings up browser based versions of the game, like Pac-Man Doodle. With so many imitation ways to play, there is something very special indeed about putting a quarter in the original 1980 arcade machine that cannot be replicated on a d-pad or a smartphone screen. The immediate response from the perfect joystick and the glow of an old CRT monitor, the crispy sound. It’s just perfect and one of our favourite games.

FQ Tip – the score for eating ghosts doubles each one per Powerpill. That’s 200 for the first, 400 the second, 800 the third and 1600 for the fourth. So try to group the ghosts together before you eat the Powerpill and much them all before the it runs out for 3000 points.