Download and Play Pac-Man

It's the 1980s arcade classic that hooked millions of gamers worldwide and devoured countless quarters -- play it once and you'll quickly see why. Guide the eternally hungry Pac-Man through a series of mazes, gobbling dozens of dots before ghosts gobble you. Chomp on a “power pill” and you can turn the tables on those ghosts…well, for a few moments, anyway.

Pac-Man is the definitive "maze chase" game -- you control the round, dot-eating gobbler, moving up, down, left or right through each maze while being chased by four ghosts. Each maze contains precisely 240 dots and four power pills. Receive 10 points for every dot your Pac-Man eats; score 50 points for each gobbled power pill. Once you have eaten every dot, a new maze begins.

This Week's Grand Prize

In addition to some cool GameTap swag, this week's grand prize winner will also receive this vintage Pac-Man board game!



This is an authentic, original board game from the early 80s, which many of us in the office have owned at some point in our lives.



We even tested it out to make sure all the pieces were there. You'll be happy to know that this game is so complete that there is an extra marble. There were two extra marbles, but our staff luchador ate one.

The Scores to Beat

As many of you know, Pac-Man has been mastered. A perfect score of 3,333,360 points has been accomplished a handful of times. The first perfect Pac-Man game grabbed major media attention when it was recorded July 30, 1999 by the infamous The King of Kong co-star Billy L. Mitchell:



The all-time GameTap high score is a much more human 641,390, recorded November 23, 2007 by hmc1969.



Get practicing, folks, you have six days! Here are the official rules:

1. Contestants will have from 6 a.m. EST to 11:59 p.m. EST on Monday, May 19, 2008, to submit their scores to the leaderboard via the GameTap client.
2. Only the top score per TapID will count toward the contest, with all other scores being thrown out.
3. Only one TapID per household will be eligible.

Green users take note: Pac-Man is a Gold-only game. Were I a salesman I might be inclined to suggest that you Go Gold and compete with the rest of us, but I am not.

Again, the tournament starts on Monday, May 19, 2008, at 6:00 a.m. EST. If you need help posting Leaderboard scores, check out the handy guide the next post down. Good luck everyone!

Download and Play Pac-Man