Google honours Pac-Man with playable logo

Productivity likely took a precipitous drop on Friday as office workers discovered an animated, playable version of Pac-Man in Google's logo on its home search page.

The company unveiled the logo, a Pac-Man maze oriented around the word "Google," on Friday morning to commemorate the game's 30th anniversary. Pac-Man, developed by Namco and released in 1980, became one of the most popular video games of the decade and helped usher in a boom period for arcades and home consoles.

Google said users will have 48 hours to play 255 levels of the game before it goes down.

The logo's designer, Marcin Wichary, said in a blog post that Pac-Man and Google were a natural fit for each other.

"They’re both deceptively straightforward, carefully hiding their complexity under the hood," he wrote. "There’s a light-hearted, human touch to both of them. And we can only hope you find using Google at least a quarter as enjoyable as eating dots and chasing ghosts. You know, without actually needing any quarters."

The company has often celebrated historic dates, inventions and events with customized logos, known as "doodles." The first was introduced in August 1998 to celebrate the annual Burning Man arts festival in Nevada. The first animated doodle, featuring a falling apple, was introduced earlier this year, in January, to honour Sir Isaac Newton's birthday.

Other doodles have commemorated the invention of the bar code, Lego, Albert Einstein's birthday and the 25th anniversary of Tetris, an online video game.

The Pac-Man doodle is the first to be animated and playable, the company said.