Pac-Man is one of the most popular video games of all time, and you can play the game on pretty much anything.  Nearly every game console has a version of it, and you can even play it on your smart phone.  And now you can play it on the top of your pizza box?!?  What a world we live in!  Seems kind of ironic since Pac-Man was said to be conceived when the creator took a slice out of a pizza (although that’s not the full story).  But here in the US, Pizza Hut is doing a promotion with Pac-Man where you can use your phone to play an AR game of Pac-Man on the top of your pizza box!  How does that work?  Well you’ll just have to read on to find out!

So for a limited time, when you order from Pizza Hut, check your box to see if it has Pac-Man all over it.  If it does, there is a QR code you can scan with your phone on the side.  It’ll take you to a web site where you can use your phone’s camera to view the top of the box.  If done correctly, it’ll let you play Pac-Man on your phone, where the maze, Pac-Man, and the ghosts pop out in 3-D.  Unfortunately it’s not a very good game of Pac-Man.  The touch screen controls stink, and the hit detection is even worse (the ghosts got me before even rounding a corner).  And if your phone slightly veers off from the image on the box, the game pauses and I couldn’t figure out how to un-pause it.  But it’s certainly an interesting idea.  I wish I could get and keep a pristine Pac-Man pizza box for my Pac-Man collection!

I tried to see if Pizza Hut was doing any other promotions with Pac-Man.  They have a TV commercial where some dude is playing a tabletop Pac-Man arcade machine, and I read you can enter to win an Arcade1up Pac-Man tabletop as well.  But I couldn’t find anything about that on their web site.  But that’s OK because I’ve already got one of those (might write about it later).  But anyway, here are some pictures I took of the pizza box and gameplay on top of it.

Tags: Misc