SILICON VALLEY, California –
On April 1st this year, Google turned its online Maps application into a game of Pac-Man, on the very streets of your hometown. But 6 days after April Fool’s, it seems the option is here to stay, and the world’s largest search engine have announced that adding such features to Maps will be an annual tradition. What we can look forward to in 2016, is our streets literally turning into a giant game of Pac-Man.
“There’ll be big yellow Pac-Men gliding along the roads, eating ephemeral pills and running away from ghosts, Blinky, Inky, Pinky, and Clyde,” Herman Melpille, the man behind the initiative, said in a press release. “Road users will be able to impact the game by bashing their cars into the soft characters, causing them to change direction and compromising the strength of the ghosts.”
The game is but a small part of a larger process, which will see Google take over 60% of the world’s streets over the next year.
“Google is moving beyond online maps and into the real world. They’ll be digitalizing the earth’s terrain, starting with first world countries but eventually moving on to those still developing,” explained tech website, Slate. “They’ll be revolutionizing not just the way we look at the world, but how life actually works. The Google car will be the beginning, but eventually our streets and buildings will belong to Google.”
Analysts speculate that the release of games such as Pac-Man is an attempt to soften the public towards their slow takeover. The web giants know that humanity can be appeased by offers of free entertainment.
“We’ve seen it in the past,” Martin Scorpese told Empire News. “With their takeover of the internet, came games such as Plants Vs Zombies. Let’s be honest, that’s not great but it caught the public’s imagination. YouTube was a stroke of genius – endless hours of free entertainment to make the fact that Google captures our most embarrassing moments.”
Among other initiatives rumored to be in the pipelines, are Super Mario characters running around the pipelines, plants actually resisting a zombie apocalypse, and a chance to rescue a princess from an evil gorilla atop a tall building.