Japanese Designer Creates Playable Microscopic Pac-Man Game

It’s classic Pac-Man, just the way you remember, except really, really small.

Japanese design professor Kotoro Tanaka has created what is quite possibly the smallest playable version of Pac-Man in the world. It’s so small in fact, that you can only play it through the eyepieces of a microscope

Using original Pac-Man hardware and a projector, Tanaka reflected the game through a mirror to create a square barely half an inch to a side, with a resolution of nearly 1,500 pixels per inch. The image was much too small to play with the naked eye, which is why a microscope was mounted above it, and Tanaka encouraged players to adjust the focus and zoom to make the game more challenging.

Tanaka created the game for an exhibition put together to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man’s creation, which closed yesterday. Unfortunately, my knowledge of Japanese is non-existent, so I can’t tell from Tanaka’s blog whether he plans to show the game at other events or whether the Pac-Man exhibition was a onetime deal. Hopefully he’ll show it again, because let’s face it, when else are you going to get to play a game through a microscope?

Source: Engadget