New York University teacher and games designer Frank Lantz
has taken the classic 1980's videogame Pac-Man to the streets
of Manhattan.
Lantz, who is director of games design at Gamelab, teaches a course at NYU
called "Big Games." He teamed up with students in the university's Interactive Telecommunications
graduate program to develop a large-scale, live-action version of the digital
arcade game on New York's real-life street grid. Instead of Pac-Man, you've got Pac-Manhattan, which is what the big analog
version is called.
The action centers around Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, the heart of the
NYU campus. The Pac-Manhattan games, which started in April, involve ten players. Five play the roles of Pac-Man
and the four "ghosts": Inky (the light-blue one), Clyde (orange), Blinky (red),
and Pinky (uh ... pink). Ghost players don orange, red, pink or light-blue ponchos, while
the person playing the game's star, Pac Man, sports two halves of a yellow Pac Man-shaped disc, the half with the mouth
is attached to the player's chest.
The remaining five players are "controllers," one for
Pac-Man and one for each ghost, who communicate with their partners on the street
with cell phones. Players also rely on a Wi-Fi system and tracking software custom-designed by Pac-Manhattan's
creators. The system displays and updates the players' grid positions during the game.
The basic rules of Pac-Manhattan are like those of the videogame. Naturally, Pac Man
has to collect all the "dots" before the ghosts catch him. Pac-man can also eat up "power
pellets" and eat up ghosts. Games last anywhere between ten minutes and an hour.
--Micropundit and Instamatic
RELATED LINKS
+ Pac-Manhattan Official Web Site
+ NYU Interactive Telecommunications' Pac-Manhattan Site
+ Gamelab Company Web Site
+ The Pac-Page [ClassicGaming.com]
+ Namco Company Web Site
+ Manhattan Gets Pac-Man Fever [Wired News]
+ Interview with Frank Lantz [Gothamist Interview]
