Pac-Man Fever

Pac-Man Fever is a 1982 concept album recorded by Buckner & Garcia. It is also the name of the first song on that album. Each song on the album is about a different classic arcade game, and uses sound effects from that game. The album was released as an LP, a cassette, an 8-track tape, and later completely re-recorded for CD release in 1999 and 2002. The title itself is a parody of “Cat Scratch Fever” by Ted Nugent.

The title song, "Pac-Man Fever", was released as a single in December 1981 and became a top-ten hit, peaking at #9 in March 1982 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earning Gold certification by the RIAA for selling over a million records; the single sold 2.5 million copies in total as of 2008. It had been released independently earlier in the year on the BGO Records label, before being picked up by CBS. "Do the Donkey Kong" was the second single released from the album, but it failed to chart except on Billboard's Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles at #103. Like the title song, the album Pac-Man Fever itself went on to receive a Gold certification from the RIAA, for over 500,000 records sold; the album sold 900,000 copies in total by the end of 1982. The duo performed both of these singles on American Bandstand on March 20, 1982, as well as appearing later that day on Solid Gold, singing "Pac-Man Fever".

Pac-Man Fever (song)

"Pac-Man Fever" is a hit single by Buckner & Garcia. Capitalizing on the video game craze of the early 1980s, the song, about the classic video game Pac-Man, peaked at #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States in March 1982.

That same month, it was certified Gold by the RIAA for over 1,000,000 units shipped to retailers; the single sold 1.2 million copies by the end of 1982, and 2.5 million copies in total as of 2008.VH1 ranked it at #98 on their list of 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders of the 80s.

A follow-up release in May 1982, "Do the Donkey Kong", just missed the Billboard chart, ranking #103.

Chart performance

Re-release

In 1998, the duo was asked to record an unplugged version of "Pac-Man Fever" exclusively for the syndicated radio show Retro Rewind. In 1999, a re-recorded version of the album was released independently by Buckner and Garcia, which was released commercially through K-Tel in 2002. The re-release was anxiously awaited by fans of the original album. However, Buckner and Garcia could not obtain the original master recordings from Sony Music Entertainment, so the duo was forced to record new performances of the songs and recreate a lot of the sound effects either digitally or musically.

Pac-Man Fever (video game)

Pac-Man Fever is a party game released for Nintendo GameCube, and PlayStation 2 in September 3, 2002 (The Nintendo GameCube's version was only released in North America). Like in many party video games, players move about on a virtual game board, with the object of the game being to reach the end first. It allows for up to four players, featuring six characters from other Namco games to choose from: Pac-Man, Astaroth, Heihachi Mishima, Ms. Pac-Man, Tiger Jackson, and Reiko Nagase. Another party game called Shrek Super Party has the same game developer.

Gameplay

There are three different types of game boards to play—Tropical, Space, and Medieval—each with its own set of minigames. After selecting a board, players can also choose to play a short, medium or long game, each game having a different amount of tiles that corresponded to the length's name.

The object of the game is to get to the goal space first. The game is played in rounds, each round begins with a four-player minigame, the results of which decides how many spaces each player moves forward on the board. Each tile on the board also has an effect. These include moving forward/going backward a few steps, losing/gaining/stealing tokens, playing a single/two-player minigame, the ability to spend earned tokens, and a raffle game to earn redemption tickets. When on a "store" tile, the player can spend tokens to: move steps forward, move others backward, buy raffle tickets, or gamble to earn more tokens. The three spaces before the goal space are raffle spaces for a redemption ticket of the fruit on the space (cherry, orange, and banana). The more raffle tickets you have for the fruit the better chance you have of winning the redemption ticket, also depending on the space you're on you need to place a certain rank or better in a minigame.