Google celebrates Pac-Man 30th Birthday

Iconic video arcade game Pac-Man is celebrating 30 years today.
The round yellow creature with a knack for gobbling dots was released in the US by a Japanese game maker in 1980.


Creator Toru Iwatani, who designed Pac-Man after a pizza with one piece missing, says he had women on his mind when thinking of the game.
Iwatani says back in the 1980s, arcades were dark places filled with shooting video games and he wanted to make them good date destinations and thought the only way he would be able to do that was to create a game that would appeal to both men and women.
And it seems to have worked - at least the part of making a game appealing to both sexes, with video game gurus saying Pac-Man was one of the first arcade games to appeal to a large audience.
Within 15 months of the game's debut, Americans had spent more than a billion dollars in quarters to play it.
The geeks at Google are also celebrating the anniversary, having created a free online version of the game on their Google doodle.
Just click on "insert coin" and play the game.