Pac-Man lives on at Google

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 25 May 2010 06:39

Your IT - Entertainment

The Pac-Man re-creation may have disappeared from Google's home page, but the game is still available if you know where to look.

If you missed the Pac-Man 30th anniversary Google doodle - or you're missing it already - fear not: the web recreation of the classic game has found a permanent home on Google's site.

If you've got time on your hands, go to www.google.com/pacman and click the Insert Coin button to start the game.

According to various reports, the appearance of the Pac-Man doodle caused concern at some workplaces and homes, with users thinking their computers had become infected by a virus.

The problem was that on some configurations of Firefox, the Pac-Man sounds started as soon as the Google search page was loaded. That's changed with the archived version, where the audio doesn't begin until the game starts.

(No audio from the game can be heard at all from Firefox on this writer's computer, even when the game is started, but it works as expected on Internet Explorer.)

And there were also reports of Google's home page being added to the blacklist on some organisation's web filters owing to prohibitions on games in the workplace.