Happy 30th Pac-Man!

I’m sure by now everyone knows that today is the 30th Anniversary of “Pac-Man.” Here's a link to the Official Namco Site.

How many of you remember playing it for the first time? To my students: What do you think about a thirty-year old videogame? Ever played it--in any form?

The picture on the right is actually a Bally “Pac-Man Plus” which was the first upgrade issued in 1982. By the way, I thought Google’s Pac-Man tribute was great!

I did some research on what else happened in 1980 and found:

January 6 – Global Positioning System time began at 00:00 UTC.
February 22 – The United States Olympic Hockey Team defeats the Soviet Union in the semifinals of the Winter Olympics, in the "Miracle on Ice."
March 8 – The first rock music festival kicks off in the Soviet Union.
May 18 – Mount St. Helens erupts in Washington, killing 57 and causing US$3 billion in damage.
May 21 – Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back is released.
July 25 – The album Back in Black is released by the Australian band AC/DC.
September 30 – Digital Equipment Corporation, Intel and Xerox introduce the DIX standard for Ethernet, which is the first implementation outside of Xerox, and the first to support 10 Mbit/s speeds.
October 21 – World Series: The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Kansas City Royals 4–2 in game 6.
November 4 – United States presidential election, 1980: Republican challenger and former Governor Ronald Reagan of California defeats incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter.
November 12 – Voyager program: The NASA space probe Voyager 1 makes its closest approach to Saturn, when it flies within 77,000 miles of the planet's cloud-tops and sends the first high resolution images of the world back to scientists on Earth.
November 21 – A then-record number of viewers tune into the U.S. TV soap opera Dallas to learn who shot lead character J.R. Ewing. The "Who shot J.R.?" event is an international obsession.
December 8 – John Lennon is assassinated by Mark David Chapman in New York City.

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