Now You Too Can Reach the Pac-Man Kill Screen Without the Agony of Being Billy Mitchell
 |
?If you’ve seen the fantastic documentary King of Kong, you know two things: 1) Billy Mitchell rose to fame for being first person to have a perfect Pac-Man game and thus reach the legendary kill screen at level 256, and 2) Billy Mitchell is not a very pleasant person. But thanks to Jakks Pacific, you’ll soon be able to reach the Pac-Man kill screen on your own without insane classic gaming skills or being Billy Mitchell! According to TR contributor Adam Pawlus’ 16bit.com blog, Jakks will release a plug-n-play Pac-Man set which, besides having an obnoxious Pac-shaped controller, will allow players to start at level 255 and thus theoretically reach the kill screen in 256. I thought that was kind of cool. And then I realized after somebody played it once they’d really have no need to ever play it again, and thus it really wasn’t that cool. But then I’d already written this article and didn’t really want to write something else.
More importantly, apparently a CG Pac-Man cartoon is in the works for 2013? That seems… weird.
About The Author
Robert Bricken is one of the original co-founders of the site formerly known as Topless Robot, and its first editor-in-chief, serving from 2008-12. He brought the site to prominence with “nerd news, humor and self-loathing” as its motto, raising it from total internet obscurity to a readership in the millions, with help from his savage “FAQ” movie reviews and Fan Fiction Fridays. Under his tenure Topless Robot was covered by Gawker, Wired, Defamer, New York magazine, ABC News, and others, and his articles have been praised by Roger Ebert, Avengers actor Clark Gregg, comedian and The Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, and others. He is currently the managing editor of io9.com. Despite decades as both an amateur and professional nerd, he continues to be completely unprepared for either the zombie apocalypse or the robot uprising.