Press Start to Play

I'm a geek. I admit it. Huge fan of Star Wars (as if you haven't figured that one out already). Watch Jeopardy faithfully every night. I'm counting down the days to the next season of Dexter. I have movie and television memorabilia around my house, from a Han Solo bust in my living room to Dexter trading cards framed and hanging in my den. I locked myself in my room for two days to read the final Harry Potter book. I cried when it was over. I can relate to Dr. Sheldon Cooper and friends on Big Bang Theory.

I am a geek. But the one geeky thing I could just never get into was video games. I am a child of the original video game system. At one time, my parents owned Pong. You know the game...a whole console for just one game on the tv screen and all the game was was a little square going back and forth. And people were AMAZED by this.

As I got older, Atari became popular. I begged for a system. I got one. I also got Pitfall. I think I played it like three times before I became bored with it. Not just the game, but the entire Atari idea. When ColecoVision came out, I begged for it. My mother glanced at my Atari which was just sitting around collecting dust and said no.

It wasn't the end of the world, because quite frankly I knew that it wasn't for me. I was never one of those kids begging for quarters so she could play video games at the candy store around the corner. I tried when I was older to join the Nintendo Craze, but once again I just wasted money. Mario Brothers was just too frustrating for me.

That's not to say I didn't like the Mario Brothers movie. I thought it was funny and cute. And the movie The Last Starfighter, which was centered on a kid who excelled at video games? I must have watched the movie a thousand times as a kid. Video games have not only changed the way we play games and entertain at home, but it changed the movies as well. There are hundreds of movies that are either based on a video game or centered around video game playing in general.

One of the biggest movies coming out this summer is Prince of Persia: The Sands Through Time, based on a video game. One of my kids' favorite movies is Spy Kids 3D: Game Over. One of the funniest movies out there is Grandma's Boy which is about a grown man who is a video game creator and lives with his Grandmother. And a very classic movie of the 80's is WarGames, another movie centered around a video game.

I'm rambling about video games and movies because over the weekend I saw Google's logo. It's Pac Man. Not only is it Pac Man, but you can actually play it too. It's all in honor of Pac Man's 30th anniversary. It blew my mind when I read that Pac Man is 30 years old. How is that even possible???

As much as I was never a video game fan, I loved Pac Man. Who didn't? We were brainwashed by Pac Man. He had his own song. His own cartoon show. His own cereal. Everything was Pac Man. Pac Man definitely broke down the walls between just being a game and making the game your life for thousands of geek children growing up in the 80's. He even had his own Christmas Special!!! A little yellow ball that gobbles up smaller balls is probably the biggest pop culture icon of the 80's. God, the 80's were weird.