In 2004, a group of Frank Lantz’s NYU students teamed up for something they called “PacManhattan,” in which a set of players dressed as Pac-Man and the pastel-colored ghosts who torment him, played a live-action version of the classic arcade game with New York City’s Washington Square Park as a grid.\r\n
\r\nSigns point to PacManhattan as one of the inspirations for this weekend’s Come Out and Play Festival, which aims to bring the world of games out of the living room and into the streets.
At the PacManhattan headquarters in New York, pastel-colored costumes of the ghosts who torment Pac-Man.
PacManhattan, an analog version of “Pac-Man” that took place in 2004, was developed in NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications graduate program.
Bill Detwiler is the Editor for Technical Content and Ecosystem at Celonis. He is the former Editor in Chief of TechRepublic and previous host of TechRepublic's Dynamic Developer podcast and Cracking Open, CNET and TechRepublic's popular online show. Previously, Bill was an IT manager in the social research and energy industries. He has bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Louisville, where he has also lectured on computer crime and crime prevention.
