Image source.

…but the silliness actually highlights the absurdity of the original Pac Man.

In PacManhattan, the city itself says where the maze is. Why is the maze like this here?

How fast you can run and how good you are at phoning in and understanding the directions is what dictates whether you get caught by ghosts in PacManhattan. In Pac Man… well, it’s totally arbitrary. A true-to-the-medium Pac Man would mean the ghosts moving as fast as the computer can move them, which is a lot quicker than my reaction time.

Pac Man now seems rather made-up. It’s a bit like going to the gym and going on a treadmill and setting the incline really steep and claiming that you’re hill-walking. But why that fast and why that steep? Instead you could be hiking in the Welsh countryside.

Matt Webb, S&W, posted 2006-07-14 (talk on 2006-07-13)