To celebrate Pacman’s 30th anniversary, Google’s homepage logo looks like a pacman game:

And the best part of it is that you can play the game too. Click on ‘insert coin’

Enjoy it at Google.

Missile command was a very simple (as far as graphics go) yet very addictive arcade game released in 1980 by Atari. The aim of the game was to defend your six cities against a never ending barrage of missiles, and with your three anti-battery stations, you had to stop them.

To do so you had a trak ball to move your cross hair, and three buttons to shoot from your three respective anti-battery stations. From memory, it was one of the first arcade games that used the trak ball. If not, it was certainly the only game where it was the main control that was heavily relied on to play the game. From my youth, I remember slamming the ball at an angle, as hard as I could, to get my cross hair from one side to the other as quick as possible.

The game is split up into levels, with each one getting harder as more and more missiles being sent down the screen – faster and faster too.

The game ends when all your six cities have been destroyed. An amusing part of the game was the flashing, huge block lettered ‘game over’ message displayed on the screen. Typical retro stuff.

If you would like to play it online, go to the Atari site and have a go.