Speaking of Pac-Man, today we headed over to the first-ever Xbox 360 Pac-Man World Championships. In a nutshell, gamers qualified to be in the finals by having the highest Pac-Man score in their region (on Xbox LIVE Arcade, of course). The finalists then headed to New York City to participate in the World Championships. After four intense rounds during the wee hours of the morning, the ten finalists were whittled down to two: Austria's Robert Glashuettner and Mexico's Carlos Romero. But the biggest surprise of all was not who were in the finals, but what they were playing....
Yep, that's right. A brand new rendition of Pac-Man -- the Pac-Man Championship Edition, which had creator Toru Iwatani working on new mazes for the lovable, pellet-muncher (the first in over 26 years!). Our own Jaded Cynic got a chance to play the game for five minutes. Click here to read his initial impressions (and how he got his butt whupped), then hit the jump to see more photos of the event...
The venue was filled with glorious Xbox 360 consoles and playable versions of the unexpected new Pac-Man game.
All of the finalists, along with Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani (who announced his retirement) and two guys with ridiculously long and unwieldy titles: Makoto Iwai, the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Namco Bandai Games America, and Jeff Bell, the corporate Vice President of Global Marketing for the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft (whew).
After the big announcement about the new game, the two finalists, Austria's Robert Glashuettner and Mexico's Carlos Romero, go head-to-head in the new championship mode, where two players compete to get the highest score in five minutes (and apparently, all of the finalists only learned the night before that they were going to compete playing a new version of Pac-Man).
And the winner is... Carlos Romero of Mexico! After losing a few lives quickly and at one point being 30,000 points behind his opponent, Carlos came back with a vengeance to take the top prize. And what are the prizes, you ask?
Well, aside from being crowned "World Champion," Carlos also received a one-of-a-kind Xbox 360 Elite signed by Toru Iwatani himself. "Do not put this on eBay or the whole Microsoft will be your enemies," said Namco Bandai COO Makoto Iwai. He also gets 100,000 Microsoft points; in real-world money, that's $1250! That'll buy you a lot of stuff on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace. Oh, but that's not all for you Mr. Romero -- no sir!
As Quiznos was a sponsor for the event, and coincidentally both Pac-Man and Quizno's are 26 years old this year (who knew Quiznos was around that long?), the company gave Carlos a 26-year supply of free Quiznos. This raises a few questions. One: do they have Quiznos south of the border? And two: does he have to bring that gigantic check with him every time he wants a freshly toasted sandwich?
In order to draw out the entire photo op process, we look on as a guy with a ladder puts up the flags and brings a three-tiered podium onto the stage. Then Iwatani came out to bequeath medals to the three top players. You know, just like the Olympics. Hey, at least the Mexican anthem didn't start playing...
The final photo opportunity before the media frenzy begins... interview time!
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