Clearly no one back then imagined that games would end up spawning something as pathetic and debased as tea bagging.
PAC MAN FEVER ACTION REPLAY HOW TO
Its lyrics drop hints on how to win and even when they sing "pluck your magic twanger, Froggy" on Froggy's Lament, it's actually a reference to an American children's TV character from the 50s rather than anything unsavoury.
PAC MAN FEVER ACTION REPLAY FULL
It's a child-like and innocent album, full of optimism and wide-eyed exuberance about the new age of play. The song and album end with the player now the willing captive of mesmerizing games that lurk within the arcades. So as Garcia confesses that he "can't stop now, I'm addicted", the arcade machine declares that "the humanoid must not escape". The duo's tour winds up with Goin' Berzerk, a dreamy synth-drenched love letter to Berzerk that integrates the robotic speech synthesis of Stern's coin-op. Pac-Man Fever: Also available on Rock Band and 8-track. Bizarrely it's followed by a song about Mousetrap, a Tom & Jerry take on Pac-Man that would have been completely forgotten now if Buckner & Garcia hadn't immortalized it in vinyl. In The Defender, Garcia admits he has "done all I can, at least for today" over the top of a cheery tune that weaves in the rumbling explosions of the fearsome shoot 'em up hit Defender. The tour continues, taking in Atari's Centipede in Ode to Centipede and Nintendo's international breakthrough with the handclap-heavy Do the Donkey Kong.Īt this point in the 80s you'd have to flip over the LP or cassette (or try to disentangle the cassette from the tape deck if it got chewed up) to get to side two where Hyperspace, a tribute to Asteroids, kicks things off with its "I'm a space cadet, I can really play" refrain. The stomp of Froggy's Lament continues the formula mixing the sound of Frogger's in-game hopping with a "Go Froggy Go!" chorus chant that betrays Buckner & Garcia's background in radio jingles. Garcia's lyrics capture the Everyman's arcade experience with "a pocket full of quarters", "a callus on my finger" and the rueful "all my money's gone, so I'll be back tomorrow night". It opens not with instruments but the simple chirps of Namco's dot-gobbling classic, before sliding into a song with a saccharine pop hook that implants itself in your head as firmly as a Half-Life headcrab. The opening track, Pac-Man Fever, sets the tone. Each song represents a different coin-op delight and all are peppered with nostalgia-inducing samples from the games. The album's eight tracks are an aural tour of a typical 1982 arcade. Gary Garcia (right) and Jerry Buckner (left) at the height of their fame. Yes it's more a hot tub time machine than a sleek Back to the Future DeLorean but it does the job. If there were such a thing as a pop music map, the duo would live in the same neighbourhood as Black Lace of Agadoo fame/infamy, although not in the same street.īut for the generation of players who earned their spurs trying to get their initials emblazoned on high-score tables, the Pac-Man Fever album is a time machine capable of whisking you back to those early days of primitive pixels and quick-fix action. Buckner & Garcia's album is processed cheese pop matured the 80s' way, using poly-ensemble synthesizers and grit-free plastic production techniques. It was a novelty record of course Lana Del Rey's Video Games it is not. Their Pac-Man Fever single might not have troubled the UK's Top 40, but in the US it was a top 10 smash and they followed it with an album of the same name that was filled with pop treats inspired by the glaring screens, darkened halls and eldritch sounds of the arcades. Together they were Buckner & Garcia, the troubadours of the days of Atari, Space Invaders and white noise explosions.
On the scale of pop music fame he was more Babylon Zoo than Lady Gaga, but for a few giddy months in 1982 videogames turned him and his musical accomplice Jerry Buckner into stars.
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