You Can Play Pac-Man In Google Maps

For April Fool’s Day, Google Maps is letting Pac-Man fight ghosts on a street near you.

Say what you will about Google, but one thing is clear: The company has a pretty good sense of humor. For last year’s April Fools Day, it even turned all of Google Maps into a giant Pokémon hunting ground. Now Google is showing April Fools Love for video games yet again – by letting you play Pac-Man in your own neighborhood.

That’s not a joke: If you visit Google Maps right now, you’ll notice a small Pac-Man image in the bottom-left corner of the screen. Click on that and Google Maps will transform a portion of your map view into a Pac-Man match, complete with ghosts, fruit, with edible dots along the streets.

Pathways leading away from the map automatically route to a street entrance from the other side of the screen, letting you play countless variations pulled from anywhere on the planet. The obvious thing to do is type in your own address, but once that’s finished why not punch in New York’s Times Square? Anywhere Google Maps has access to with a minimum number of roads is an option.

Not only is this a fun diversion, it’s probably the closest we’ll see to Pixels actually playing out on our own streets. If it’s anything like the Pokémon mini-game, it’ll likely run until April 2 – lots of time to try and rack up a high score.

Source: Google Maps, via Engadget