Pacman's in town

However this weekend they became the only two places on the planet to organise Human Pac-Man events to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the world’s most famous gaming character.

And although “Pac-Manhattan” was probably held in more a glamorous location than Wharf Green – Swindon can boast that its event was organised by the UK’s first ever Museum of Computing, based in Theatre Square, town centre.

During Saturday’s event, hundreds of children and adults took part in the game, controlling Pac-Man by jumping on a coloured control pad.

But it was not only local people that attended after news of the event was vaulted from the Adver website to BBC’s World Service – which was then beamed to 150m people around the globe by gaming chatrooms and bloggers.

Simon Webb, curator of the museum, said he met gaming fans from Birmingham who travelled to Swindon in order to take part in the event.

He said: “This event caught on in gaming chatrooms all over the UK, so we had people from all over the world interested in what we were doing.

“Last year we played Space Invaders on the big screen and this year we did the human Pac-Man event and also played the game on the big screen.

Pac-Man, or Pakkuman as it’s called in its native Japan, was originally created by Toru Iwatani and was officially released May 22, 1980 by Namco, in arcade format.

The game is often credited with being a landmark in video game history.

Over the weekend the anniversary was celebrated in numerous ways including Google incorporating a working version of the game in its logo.

The museum will be showing its Pac-Man exhibition for the next four-weeks,during which time visitors can play Pac-Man on systems including Sega and Atari.

Entrants can also interact with ‘ancient’ computing technology like the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair Spectrum or modern gaming systems like the Nintendo Wii.

Anyone interested in finding out more is asked to visit www.museumofcomputing.org.uk for further details.