What do you mean, btw, by calling yourself a “savant”?
This guy cannot be for real. Pac-Man was by far the easiest, most intuitive video game of all time after watching the attract screen go through its cycle a single time. I understood it when I was all of five years old. I think we’re being had.
I’ve been playing this one:
It just ‘feels’ better to me, but maybe because I’ve been playing that one for awhile. Plus it has sound 
That game installation wanted to install a bunch of browsers and such on my computer.
It’s a title I was granted for providing useful assistance to the Perfect Master. Correcting him, in fact, but we don’t dwell on that as it raises uncomfortable issues regarding inerrancy. I have a pretty broad knowledge of Chicago history and geography, and some other subjects too.
What I apparently don’t have is a knowledge of the universe of video games that some of you take for granted—and mock others for not having. I remember seeing Pong in a Sears store the summer after high school, but I guess I was already in grad school by the time other video games came out. If there was one in the supermarket, it completely escaped my notice or perhaps I tuned it out. They just were never part of my world.
You were in grad school at 18? Remember, I’m almost exactly your age.
Sorry about that. I didn’t remember it doing that when I first went there, and it doesn’t ask me now - it just goes right to the Pac-Man.
Pac-Man wasn’t just video games. It was a little media empire in its own right, spawning a pop song (which has already been referenced), a TV show, and a 94% brand awareness among American consumers as of 2008. That’s not even mentioning all of the other video games created explicitly to clone Pac-Man that generally served to keep Pac-Man itself in the public consciousness.
There are people who envy your apparent ability to totally tune out popular culture.
Yeah. I thought he was joking at first, but I think he is being sincere. I suppose if you had no interest in that type of culture, why would you know the rules of Pac-Man? I grew up in Chicago, and I agree that Pac-Man was ubiquitous here in the 80s. From Venture('s) and Zayre('s) (now defunct department stores–the apostrophe “s” being marked in parenthesis to reflect the local elocution) to the neighborhood pizza parlor or hot dog stand or whatnot, you’d have to be actively avoiding it not to run into it and see it and get a glimpse of the general rules of the game. That said, I’m sure there’s element of everyday culture I’m completely oblivious of, too.
I haven’t seen any mockery. Incredulity, I have seen.
No, I entered grad school in 1979 at age 22.
Wikipedia says Pac-Man came out in 1980. I certainly knew of its existence, and probably even walked past some of the machines somewhere, but that’s not the same as knowing how to play. I also know of the existence of pai-gow and cribbage and Australian Rules Football and 42.