9 Times Video Games Eerily Predicted The Future‏

9. Pac-Man The Prototypical Raver

An oldie but a goodie, this joke gets misattributed to everyone from Namco themselves to Bill Gates for some reason. In fact the classic one-liner originated with stand-up comedian Marcus Brigstocke, and it goes: "If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." Which, as far as one-liners go, is a pretty good joke. But besides being rather witty and a sly dig at the constant moral panics over what videogames are doing to kids' brains, it's also...kind of true. The original Pac-Man arcade game came out in 1980, a good ten years before acid house had grown from the ashes of its Chicago predecessor and gotten young people running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music. Although probably eating less cherries, and drinking more endless glasses of water. Brigstocke's reaction to the misattribution is pretty amusing too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBwMjzVoS5E