I used to love Pac-Man as a nipper, too. I think my first encounter with the game was the tabletop-version at a local pub. This was back when the best you could hope for at home was the God-awful, he-never-looks-up-or-down Atari VCS version. I hate to rag on the VCS, as I loved it, but some of those games were pretty dire. I have vague and less-than-fond memories of trading my entire Subbuteo set for the handheld (and actually quite rubbish) Puck-Man, such was my enthusiasm for pills and ghosts.

Quite a few years later I became semi-obsessed with Baby Pac-Man, which was a videogame/pinball hybrid, and Pac-Land was almost – but not quite – as much fun as Super Mario Bros.

Good times. I still like to maintain that true videogame playability died with the Super Nintendo.

Our family spent many a summer holiday in Newquay. The hotel we'd regularly stay in had a couple of tabletop Space Invaders machines. After dinner, all the kids would invariably congregate around them for two-player marathons, scrounging ten pen pieces off our parents for the next blippity-neon fix, knocking back glass after glass of iced Coca-Cola. Happy days!

Such was our fixation with Pac-Man, our grandparents bought my brother and I our own handheld Pac-Man games. My brother drew the short straw with TomyTronic Pac-Man, which you can see here:

http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Tomy/PacMan.htm

It had a small maze, Pac-Man always faced in the same direction and could only eat dots while moving from right to left! Actually, I see the Puck-Man branded version of it on the same page, so you probably had the same thing.

I was a bit luckier with Futuretronics Pac-Man (also branded Puck Monster), which looked like this:

http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Misc/FuturetronicsP...

This one played a little more authentically, much to my brother's envy.

A brief flirtation with the Pac-Man bubblegame card game aside, my interest in Pac-Man eventually subsided, once I had a ZX Spectrum and C64 to keep me occupied. On later visits to video game arcades, I'd enjoy playing Pacmania and was pleasantly surprised by the near arcade-perfect Amiga port that turned up a few years later.

Dammit, now I'm firing up MAME for a quick blast of Pac-Man and Pacmania!

Yay for the Sierra adventures! However, if that link doesn't mention Gabriel Knight, then I hope I won't be expected to click.

Also, I have a love/hate relationship with Pac-Man. The game frustrates me to no end, yet I feel compelled to play it as if I'm somehow magically not going to suck at it one day.

I'm loving the new Atari-esque site logo, btw!

I forgot to mention Pac-Man stickers; I used to use my school lunch money to buy as much as I could, saving 19p for fries and baked beans, like five times a week. Insane.

Yep, Puck-Man: that’s the one. Absolute rubbish, it was. I also became a bit of a wizard on Mini Munchman.

http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Grandstand/MiniMunc...

With no exaggeration whatsoever, I could clock the game when it was held upside-down, with my eyes closed. THAT’s how often I played the darn thing. I had every movement the ghosts ever made completely memorized. No real random back then, but still, something of an achievement.

Good times.

Yeah, the guy kind of relegates the Gabriel Knight series to a mere "also published" list. It's a bit like writing up a guide to Spielberg movies and leaving off Jurassic Park.

I must admit I never really played many Sierra adventures back in the day. I had a brief flirtation with some games in the Space Quest and Police Quest series, but I found them to be a little slow-paced and home to too many instant death scenarios. I did buy Gabriel Knight though and it's one of my all-time faves.

Glad you noticed the Atari joystick inspiration in the new logo too!

Oh, and don't forget the Pac-Man scratch-card games that came with a slab of bubblegum. They, alongside Eagle, Scream, 2000 AD and a huge bag of penny sweets, were always an essential purchase at the local newsagent.