He’s number one. Of all time. Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Asteroids–none of them can match the sheer number of quarters this eyeless, pie-shaped glutton gobbled down during the heyday of video arcade gaming.

Maze games always did well, because life itself is a sort of maze, and these games give the people playing them a short-lived, but potent sense of control over their own existence. But Pac-Man was more than just a “successful maze game,” it was a phenomenon that eventually reached the point of epidemic. A national fever! Listen, if you can get two living legends–Bill Buckner of the Boston Red Sox and Jerry Garcia from the Grateful Dead, to come together in a studio over a long weekend to record a top ten hit you know you’ve attained some real cultural cachet.

Let’s put it another way. I never saw those nasty, annoying Centipedes get their own Hanna- Barbera TV show. I never saw Zaxxon lunch boxes. I never saw babies being named Tron. This guy was the king. He was Ali, he was George Steinbrenner, he was Justin Bieber and Elvis Presley combined.

Even today, some 30 years later, you still see people wearing Pac-Man costumes come late October. The retro gaming site Freepacman.com gets more hits than the Obamacare website does. Young girls you’d think were too young to have even heard of this yellow fellow turn out to have him tattooed on their hips or arms. The sampled sounds of Pac-Man hard at work are the source material for some of the 21st century’s most innovative electronic music. Geez Louise, in Norway, the home of black metal, half-insane Satan worshippers have been known to stage life-size games of this in huge mazes where the participants, ghosts and Pac-Man both, actually fight to the death during the course of play.

Amazing.