ReMix:Pac-Man "Vice" 3:19

Happy Birthday, Pac-Man!

Pac-Man's 42 years young today, eternally yellow, circular, and hungry! We celebrate with a double-barrel blast of OCR newcomers honoring the Namco arcade game's legendary quarter- and Power Pellet-eater!

First up is GreatBlakes (Chris Blakley) taking us on a dark journey through Toshio Kai's classic Pac-Man jingle. The unforgettable source is rhythmically altered as well as slowed down, serving as the arrangement's ever-present foundation, an unapologetically liberal approach that effective employs textural changes to stay engaging and interesting. The artist keeps it brief:

"My goal was to create a dark/gritty '80s retro future-inspired half-time remix of the Pac-Man theme song."

Yep, short and sweet, I'd call this an unqualified success. Hell, a track with an atmosphere like this would be missing something if it didn't include some sampled anti-drug film lines, so as soon as they arrived at :48, I was high on life. Sir_NutS was also on board, even sensing some similarity to the work of the now-late Vangelis (RIP) with the foreboding instrumentation and sound design:

"wow, I wasn't expecting this for a pacman remix. Pretty ominous and dark sounding stuff. I get some blade runner vibes with some of this arrangement, like the tension-creating bassline which hangs on that note forever (but doesn't get tiresome). Excellent soundscape and use of synths. The arrangement is great, turning this classic short tune into something this epic is pretty awesome. I feel the mix is missing some mid frequencies but it's fine overall.

Man I just get some nasty cyberpunk vibes from this. If there's ever going to be a Pacman: act zero, this is the song to put in that."

When NutS says this could fit in a radical dystopian reimagining of Pac-Man a la Bomberman: Act Zero, just take Hiro Kimura's Atari box art and change the castle into a dystopian scene out of The Running Man, and GreatBlakes would musically set the stage there perfectly.

Around these parts, we sometimes end up saying happy birthday to classic games in some strange and unorthodox ways! That said, there's a lot of creative virtue found in GreatBlakes' "Vice," so it's well worth hit after hit after hit. Once you get a taste, "nobody is going to stay an occassional user very long..." ;-)